


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 














BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

THE MODERN MEANING OF CHURCH 
MEMBERSHIP 



The Deeper Meaning 
of Stewardship 


BY 


JOHN M. VERSTEEG 

a 





THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 















Copyright, 1923, by 

JOHN M. VERSTEEG 



» <. 


Printed in the United States of America 


FEB -3 1323 

©C1A690252 



DEDICATED TO 
MR. JACOB RIBBE 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Foreword. 9 

I Stewardship Claims. 13 

II The Foundations of Stewardship. 27 

III Social Christians. 49 

IV The Tithe and Stewardship. 63 

V Stewardship and Property. 85 

VI Creative Ownership.. 107 

VII Acquisitive Ownership. 121 

VIII The Wider Stewardship. 151 

IX The Stewardship of the Church. 167 

X Teaching Stewardship. 183 

XI A Stewardship Reverie. 197 

Appendix. 209 

Bibliography. 217 

















FOREWORD 


Stewardship, always a part of the Chris¬ 
tian faith, is receiving fresh attention. The 
church aroused large interest in it for the sake 
of its world-wide needs. Increasing treat¬ 
ment is accorded it in the pulpit and the press. 
It is getting into the thought of the man on 
the street. This is a wonderful thing that is 
coming to pass in our midst. Stewardship is 
converting our collective concepts. The word 
of the social gospel is made flesh by it. This 
revival of stewardship spells the survival of 
our faith. Future generations will arise to 
call us blessed for taking it to heart. 

Our defeats lie closest to our victories. In 
some quarters a one-sided emphasis came to 
prevail. Stewardship came to be taught for 
the expansion of our work rather than as the 
expression of our life. The stewardship depart¬ 
ments in the various denominational campaigns 
were given a difficult task. They were expected, 
within limited periods, so to emphasize stew- 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


ardship principles that massive amounts could 
be raised. What wonder that when time was 
lacking for the former, only those phases were 
stressed that were sure to accelerate giving? 
Hence the tithe was exalted out of all propor¬ 
tion to the subject itself. Now we are able 
to see that this haste caused waste both of 
forces, friends, and funds. The church must 
teach stewardship, not to protect itself, but 
to save the world. It would be an unspeak¬ 
able blunder were Protestantism to permit so 
basic a subject as this to be brought into 
discredit by those who seize upon it as a quick 
road to finance. 

Stewardship is worthy of our thought, even 
though much that goes by its name may be 
unworthy of it. Indeed, much of the subject 
has not yet been thought through, which is 
another way of saying that much of this sub¬ 
ject may have to be thought over. Ex cathedra 
deliverances concerning it abound, but they 
are not rooted in reason; there is no heart 
in them. It is open-minded study of steward¬ 
ship of which the church stands in need. No 
blunder should be permitted to blind us to 
the splendor of this movement. It is cap¬ 
turing the Christian conscience in amazing 

10 


FOREWORD 


fashion. Stewardship now stands revealed as 
one of the sturdy truths first in the mind of 
Christ. To its massive and mastering impli¬ 
cations his followers are responding. We need 
but to widen its meaning to have it pervade 
their lives. 

These chapters are an attempt to embody 
these deeper aspects. Many items here dis¬ 
cussed have elsewhere been finely dealt with. 
But there are certain phases, social and psy¬ 
chological, as well as spiritual, that have not 
heretofore been marshaled under the heading 
of stewardship. These chapters doubtless fall 
short of a thorough treatment. Much will 
remain unsaid. But if he can move some reader 
toward greater stewardship, the writer will at 
least have furthered the cause of the Lord he 
serves. 

Special attention is called to the Appendix, 
where the voice of scholarship speaks in refer¬ 
ence to the tithe. 

J. M. V. 

Jersey City, New Jersey. 


11 




“Do men gather grapes from thorns or figs from 
thistles? No, 

every good tree bears sound fruit, 

but a rotten tree bears bad fruit; 

a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, 

and a rotten tree cannot bear sound fruit. 

So you will know them by their fruit. Any tree 
that does not produce sound fruit will be cut down 
and thrown into the fire. 

“It is not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ 
who will get into the Realm of heaven, but he who 
does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will 
say to me at that Day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not 
prophesy in your name? did we not cast out demons 
in your name? did we not perform many miracles 
in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I 
never knew you; depart from my presence , you 
workers of iniquity .’ ”— Jesus. 

“The Gospel contemplates . . . bettering human 
society. It appeals to the sympathy and con¬ 
science of the individual, bidding him love his 
neighbor as himself, and, since he is bound to 
rejoice in his neighbor’s happiness equally with his 
own, to treat the neighbor, not as a competitor, 
but as a partner or a brother, giving him freely all 
he needs. . . . Yet Christianity . . . has never been 
applied in practice.” 1 — James Bryce. 

1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from Modern 
Democracies , by James Bryce. 


12 



CHAPTER I 

STEWARDSHIP CLAIMS 

Language is not an infallible means of 
conveying ideas. We sometimes overwork our 
terms. The temptation to do so is especially 
strong when we deal with elastic words. There 
is a mental glee that comes in putting words 
through spiritual gymnastics, as most of those 
given to speaking are able to testify. When 
our leaders saw some years ago that money- 
drives were necessary if the church were to 
meet postwar needs, they fell upon the word 
“stewardship” with avidity. Here was a word 
that could lend itself to any enterprise! They 
worked it for all it was worth. In every major 
appeal it was given prominence. Talk was 
made of the stewardship of prayer, the steward¬ 
ship of time, the stewardship of money, the 
stewardship of life. And this use of the word, 
it must be confessed, was wholly legitimate. 

We are stewards of manifold mercies. All of 

13 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


life is an intrustment. But it was not wholly 
wise. A word may stand for so much that 
it does not stand for enough. It is best to 
employ those terms that most clearly con¬ 
form to life. In the speech of every day stew¬ 
ardship means the management of another’s 
property. Stewardship is trusteeship . 1 A 
trustee administers buildings or funds. When 
stewardship is mentioned people at once think 
of money. This is as it should be. We dare 
not forget life-service, or time-investment, or 
worship, and we should seek for terms to 
express these properly. But let us reserve the 
word “stewardship” for that which it best 
fits. Let it be applied to possessions , to the 
things which we call ours. It is in this sense 
that the word will be used in this book. 

Stewardship comes to say that we need to 
rethink our religion. There are not many 
claims one may deem more momentous than 
this. Stewardship is not so simple as some 
folks seem to think. Great truths cannot be 
compressed into epigrams. They overrun the 
banks of brilliant brevity. To give steward¬ 
ship a pious name or to clothe it in pungent 
phrase is not to tell all of its story. Steward- 


1 It is more; but surely this. 


14 



STEWARDSHIP CLAIMS 


ship is frequently mentioned in connection 
with tithing. We shall later attempt to see 
whether this is fair. Just now let us merely 
notice how really easy that is. It does not 
require much thinking. The tithe is pre¬ 
determined—ten per cent for the Lord and 
you are through with it. You know just 
where you are at. If stewardship simply meant 
the payment of a set proportion, it might 
require emotion, but would call forth little 
thought. But since it involves the governance 
of our property, and of all property, we are 
forced to think a bit. For property to-day is 
exceedingly complicated. And stewardship 
holds that property must do the will of God. 
One might become a tither from sentimentalism . 
The pomp and circumstance of drives might 
sway one emotionally. But one becomes a 
steward only from sentiment. However deep 
the feeling, it is always attached to high 
thinking. Stewardship is synonymous with 
Christian thoughtfulness. 

Stewardship calls upon us to set up better 
standards. For although it is a belief, it is 
most of all a practice. One must not simply 
agree with but to its truth. Most men are not 

alive to the need for a change in standards. 

15 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


Their conduct accords with prevalent con¬ 
ventions. They are well satisfied if they live 
up to the rules and regulations of the society 
into which they were born. They do not con¬ 
sider it an obligation to examine the principles 
or standards of the social order into which they 
came. Plato opined that the unexamined life 
is intolerable for a human being. He ought 
to live now! What multitudes he would find 
in the “cow-paths of the mind,” what hordes 
journeying in the grooves which the past pro¬ 
duced! But it is different with a steward. 
He looks into things and his valor follows his 
vision. Knowing that persons are God’s ulti¬ 
mate concern, he endeavors to bring all things 
into subjection to the passion of his Lord. 
He values property for what it can do for 
persons. He sees, as did Aristotle, that prop¬ 
erty must be the instrument of the best and 
highest life. Things to him are ever the 
scaffolding for personality. He puts conscience 
into his cash. It is alleged that no country 
is more thoroughly the victim of the “mob- 
mind” than this fair land of ours. The steward 
is an honorable exception. He does not “follow 
the crowd in evildoing” with his possessions. He 

has broken the habit of acquisition. He thinks 

16 



STEWARDSHIP CLAIMS 


of business in “unbusinesslike” terms; he is 
acclimated to the vocabulary of Christ. Though 
life may often have to be compromise, it never 
for him spells surrender of the principle he 
holds. He offers Mammon no libations; he 
makes gold the servant of God. Nor is it 
simply a question of the adjustment of this 
principle to his circle of activities. It means 
the changing of the environment itself by way 
of this practice into the realm of God. This 
will not be accomplished by pious but thought¬ 
less folks, nor by the reticent and cringing. 
If anyone is a candidate for volitional ventures, 
stewardship offers him unexcelled opportu¬ 
nities. To secure a social order in which the 
will of God is done is a lifelong task in which 
one must practice to preach. It is not done 
by counting so many dollars per week into 
one’s tithing box, though this too may well 
be done. It is only done by unfaltering alle¬ 
giance to one’s trusteeship. Stewardship is 
not an issue to be accepted or rejected at 
one’s leisure. Its rejection, to use common 
speech, means to turn Christ down. A verdict 
in its favor is a triumph for Christ’s cause. 

And stewardship exacts enthusiasm . To enlist 

one’s property in the service of the best is 

17 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


to sense the joy of deliberate saviourhood. 
One gets the sense of values that gladdened 
Jesus’ life. One has an unobscured vision of 
the spiritual. The dollar is not in the way. 
One appreciates souls. Aggressive humility 
comes. A steward does not make his boast 
in his property. He makes his boast in the 
Lord. He prays: “Lord, what wouldst thou 
have me to do with thine own?” And he hurls 
his life after this prayer with the abandon of 
a soul who is at home in God. He does not, 
like the old mammy, put a tear in the collec¬ 
tion basket. He concretes his sympathy. The 
man who organizes his emotions around stew¬ 
ardship builds his life on love. 

If stewardship makes claims upon you, it 
also makes claims for itself. Stewardship 
believes itself possessed of vision. The steward 
sees the acquisitive ambition at the throat 
of the spiritual life. He senses that a world 
enslaved by selfishness can never crown Christ 
Lord. He sees ,the situation as it actually is. 
Statistics showing that only fourteen per cent 
of the incomes in the United States are over 
$2,000 per year, 2 that the vast bulk of the 

2 Compare figures quoted by Mr. Basil Manly before the Evanston 
Conference on “Christianity and the Economic Order.” 

18 



STEWARDSHIP CLAIMS 


wealth is in the hands of a few or in their 
control, corroborate his conviction. But he 
would know it were no statistics available. 
He would know, from his human contacts, 
how crushingly the hand of economic pressure 
bears down upon people, and the consequences 
in mental, social, and spiritual stolidity. The 
steward exalts the spiritual above and through 
the material. Stewardship is not a new thing 
that has come to pass on the earth. It is an 
ancient and basic truth with a new emphasis. 
It comes to say that the deceitfulness of riches 
chokes out spiritual life. The struggle for 
existence prevents many people from follow¬ 
ing after life. The steward sees the solution. 
Life must not be a worry; it must be a joy. 
It is his conviction that to own is to owe, to 
live is to give, to love is to lift. It is a tre¬ 
mendous portent that so many count them¬ 
selves honored to be stewards for the Lord. 
We shall not have done with the loathsome 
diseases that paralyze the race until our sense 
of trusteeship embraces the physical. We 
shall not Christianize humanity at its base— 
the only place where it can finally and effec¬ 
tively hope to be Christianized—until the 

trusteeship of parenthood is given cognizance. 

19 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


In short, the steward sees the solution for all 
our problems in a sense of trusteeship to God. 
The steward is the only really forward-looking 
man of his time. He is the citizen of to-morrow, 
the saviour of to-day. He sees that things 
exist for persons and not persons for things. 
We all see this truth in part, but the steward 
sees it steadily and sees it whole. 

Stewardship claims to he timely . Our day is 
characterized by a reversion to pagan ideals. 
Just how far the war fostered this one cannot 
say. But that it is here thoughtful observers 
do not doubt. Much is doubtless the sur¬ 
vival of pagan and barbarous ideas. We 
suffer sadly from selfishness. Our civilization 
needs healing, it needs synthesis. To quote 
Professor Conklin: “When one considers the 
utter anachronism presented by the survival 
of primitive or even savage ideals of religion, 
not only in an age of general enlightenment 
but even in persons of high intelligence and 
culture; . . . when one reflects on the fact that 
for nineteen centuries so great a part of the 
world that professes to be Christian has re¬ 
mained heathen at heart, and that to-day the 
teachings of Jesus are generally regarded by 

his so-called followers as too lofty to be prac- 

20 


STEWARDSHIP CLAIMS 


tical, we may well wonder whether mankind 
is making any progress in religion.” 3 Now, 
stewardship comes at a time like this with 
its invigorating emphasis on the enthronement 
of good above goods. It comes to make prop¬ 
erty safe for the soul. It furnishes a perspective 
on personality and on property that makes the 
relation between these two the glorifying of 
God. “Nothing can prevent mankind from 
sinking beneath the tremendous temptations 
due to modern wealth and power save the 
creation of a strong religious life which shall 
lead us to consecrate our control over nature 
to the process of bringing in the kingdom of 
God.” 4 And stewardship, timely for the world , 
is timely for the church. Though seen in the 
light of the hope of the early return of our 
Lord, the early church placed property at the 
service of personality. But soon this pristine 
view was contaminated by contacts with the 
pagan world, and when the church was con¬ 
quered by Rome its capitulation to Mammon 
was almost complete. The monastic move- 


3 The Direction of Human Evolution , p. 170, Edwin Grant Conklin. 
Charles Scribner’s Sons, Publishers, New York City. 

4 Social Idealism and the Changing Theology , p. 153, G. B. Smith. Uni¬ 
versity of Chicago Press, Publishers, Chicago. 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


ment with its vows of poverty and obedience 
did not question the right of the social order 
from which it escaped. It did not find it 
congenial, but deemed it necessary. Nor were 
things bettered much when the Reformation 
came. The revolt against institutionalism 
fostered an individualism that was narrow in 
the extreme. The streak on the page Luther 
wrote in history may be traced to his incom¬ 
petent grasp of the social teachings of Christ. 
The theory of purpose later came to be re¬ 
placed by the theory of mechanism, and the 
sense of obligation succumbed to the sense of 
ownership. To-day, with all of our social 
gospel, many church members still think of 
Christianity chiefly in individualistic terms and 
lack the conception of their trusteeship for 
God in the affairs of everyday life. It is timely 
for the church to be recalled to a Christian 
view of life. Horace Bushnell said that the 
church needs but one more revival to win the 
world for Christ—a revival of stewardship. 
How timely, then, for this movement to recall 
the church to the task for which it chiefly 
exists. Nor could anything be more timely 
for the individual. We are told that 4 ‘the 

doctrine of the selfless life” constitutes “the 

22 


STEWARDSHIP CLAIMS 


one really great epoch in moral evolution, . . . 
comparable in its effect to the Copernican 
revolution in astronomy and the remodeling 
of scientific method achieved in the period 
from Galileo to Newton .” 5 But this doctrine 
admittedly is “only one half of the truth.” 
It is not self-divestment but self-in vestment 
Christianity asks. It is self-divestment from 
control over things and self-investment for a 
cause that makes acceptance of stewardship an 
epochal event in one’s life. Stewardship is the 
only healthy diet for the soul. Lastly, stew¬ 
ardship is timely for the sake of Jesus Christ . 
Stewardship gives him a chance. It widens 
the application of his religion. New laurels 
will be placed upon his brow. He will be 
crowned conqueror in realms long withheld 
from his sway, and they will bloom to holi¬ 
ness under the mild dominion of the Prince 
of Peace. 

Because stewardship is grounded in social 
spirituality there are a number of claims which 
it comes to make upon us. It asks that we 
rethink our faith, that we remold our standards, 
that we enter into the joy of unselfishness. For 

5 The Rational Good , L. T. Hobhouse. Henry Holt and Co., Publishers, 
New York City. 


23 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


itself it makes the claim that it has the vision 
needed for a better way of life, and that its 
message is timely for the day in which we 
live. Every Christian, therefore, ought to 
consider its case. And he must give it his 
vote; neutrality is impossible; he must be for 
or against! 


24 





























































“When the Pharisees heard he had silenced the 
Sadducees, they mustered their forces, and one 
of them, a jurist, put a question in order to tempt 
him. ‘Teacher/ he said, ‘what is the greatest com¬ 
mand in the Law?’ He replied, ‘ You must love the 
Lord your God with your whole heart , with your whole 
soul , and with your whole mind. This is the great¬ 
est and chief command. There is a second like it: 
you must love your neighbor as yourself. The whole 
Law and the prophets hang upon these two com¬ 
mands.’ ”— Jesus. 

“The only way out... is to revise our concep¬ 
tions of values, and to put the kingdom of God 
first. If we do this and look at real values, at 
values of intellect, heart, and conscience, and sub¬ 
ordinate our doing and thinking to the kingdom 
of God, there will be no trouble in solving all other 
practical problems that may arise. And until we 
do this we must worry along as at present in blind¬ 
ness and confusion and bitterness of soul. There 
can be no abiding peace or joy, whether in the 
personal or in the social life, until men make the 
kingdom of God first and fundamental .”—Borden 
P. Bowne} 


1 The Essence of Religion, pp. 274, 275, Borden P. Bowne. Houghton 
Mifflin Co., Publishers, Boston and New York. 


26 



CHAPTER II 

THE FOUNDATIONS OF 
STEWARDSHIP 

Jesus believed in life. His was a social 
faith. Of course we all have “the will to 
live.” When we speak of “the struggle for ex¬ 
istence” or “the instinct for self-preservation” 
we express our love of life. All evolutionary 
theories assume our devotion to existence. 
But Christ’s belief in life was a boundless 
enthusiasm. It must have been patent to 
him, as to any observant man in his day, 
that the career he had chosen was not con¬ 
ducive to longevity; yet life, not death, was 
his theme. Indeed, his very thought of death 
was in terms of life. For him b-e-l-i-e-f 
always spelled b-e-l-i-f-e. He believed in life 
so strongly that he spent his life on it. Never 
was he more in earnest than when he spoke 

of it. He could conceive of no more heinous 

27 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


offense than the dulling or crippling of life. 
Acclaimed as the light of life, he never made 
light of it. Life was his criterion. Vociferous 
applause gains one no standing with Christ. 
Merely to compliment him is to “damn” him 
“with faint praise.” To be his friend one 
must hold life dearer than one’s life. That 
poilu who wrote his mother just before the 
zero hour at Verdun: “Don’t grieve for me, 
mother. The beauty of life is far more than 
life itself,” had the only view agreeable to 
Jesus. Christ has no ear for those who but 
say to him “Lord, Lord,” but those who do 
the will of his Father in the loving and lifting 
of life gain his unstinted praise. The world 
has never known a greater advocate of life 
than Jesus. No one surpassed him in sensing 
solidarity with life. 

Wh/ft hurt Jesus to the heart was that most 
of the folks he met were living on the fringe 
of life. They were content with so little of it. 
They did not invade life. This is why he 
voiced the longing, “Ye will not come to me 
that ye might have life.” It is clear now that 
to study biology without biography is to know 
the form of life but to miss the power thereof. 

Fortunate indeed should we account ourselves 

28 


FOUNDATIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 


that the portals of our libraries swing wide to 
let us freely commune with leviathan lives. 
Such communion begets the conviction that all 
great lives invaded life! They were adven¬ 
turers into its unfrequented realms. They 
were “pioneer souls who blazed their paths 
where highways never ran /’ 1 They pursued 
“time-winds out of chaos from the star-fields 
of the Lord .” 2 The language of the Master 
was vocal in their careers: “I came that ye 
might have life . . . abundantly.” They loved 
life enough to invest their lives in its behalf. 
They made it clear that to aim at life we must 
aim with life. 

To account for the viewpoint of Christ, you 
must consider not only his belief in life, but 
his belief about it. When we seek to know 
what life is we come to the discovery that 
no one has definitely defined it for us. No 
one is likely to. “Science, when a definition 
of the ultimate meaning of life is demanded 
of it, is no nearer a solution to-day than it was 
of old .” 3 Herbert Spencer came as near to 


1 Sam Walter Foss. 

2 Vachel Lindsay. 

3 Foundations of Faith, p. 21, John Kelman. Fleming H. Revell Com¬ 
pany, Publishers, New York City. 


29 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


defining life as any scientist probably will, 
when he spoke of it as the sum total of the 
forces that can resist death! Professor J. 
Arthur Thomson’s great “Outline of Science” 
recites “the procession of life through the 
ages and . . . the linking of life to life, 4 ” but 
a definition it does not attempt to give. Sir 
Oliver Lodge pursues the atom to its lair, and 
not content with the electron, comes upon the 
ion, so small that there must be a mass-meeting 
of multitudes of them before their gathering 
can be visible to the unaided eye. But the 
meaning is not thus found. Turn to a modern 
philosopher like Bergson and you are in a 
whirl of definitions in which consistency has 
hard sledding. From times immemorial men 
have set themselves to answer the question of 
life and in the day in which we live men never 
get quit of it. Why is the answer not forth¬ 
coming? Because, while existence may be 
static, or, rather, may seem so to be, life is 
on the move. Not by its roots, but by its 
fruits, as Dr. Fosdick has said, must life be 
judged. So long as Browning’s description of 
man must be acknowledged even partially true, 

4 The Outline of Science, vol. 1, p. 6, J. Arthur Thomson. G. P. 
Putnam’s Sons, Publishers, New York City. 

30 



FOUNDATIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 


Finds progress, man’s distinctive mark alone, 

Not God’s, and not the beasts’: God is, they are, 
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be,” 

life will escape all dictionary strait jackets and 
encyclopaedia cages. Experience will speak 
trumpet-tongued where definitions are dumb. 

“Hefinds progress” Jesus preferred descrip¬ 
tion to definition. He was all the time speaking 
of life in terms of growth. As he saw it, life 
is not something ready made; it is something 
in the making. We are not so much beings 
as becomings. Not so long ago religion per¬ 
sisted in repressing life. This stage has not 
been totally outgrown. Else why the frequent 
admonitions to be content with our lot? But> 
for the most part, religious leaders in our day 
foster fullness of life. They thus prove true 
to the genius of Christ, for Christ rings in the 
life that is to be. We cannot stay put and 
stay Christian. It may be the task of science 
to place an interrogation mark behind life and 
pronounce it a question. But it must be the 
task of Christianity to place an exclamation 
mark behind life and call it a quest. These 
are, of course, not mutually exclusive. But 

for Christianity to come short of this would 

31 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


be to play traitor to its truth. With Living¬ 
stone, it must “go anywhere, provided it be 
forward.” 

This, you say, is simple enough. The fact 
of progress few now doubt. The evidence is 
all for it. What has this to do with Christian 
life? Much every way. For the distinguishing 
characteristic of Christianity is that it con¬ 
ceives of life as progress in love. To speak of 
love is to use a word of which very loose use 
is made. The love that seeks its satisfaction 
in getting disintegrates life. The love that 
seeks its satisfaction in giving unifies life. 
Needless to say, the latter alone is Christian: 

“Love is a flame to burn out human wills, 

Love is a flame to set the will on fire , 

Love is a flame to cheat men into mire. 

One of the three, we make love what we choose .” 5 

Jesus hailed life as progress in love. It meant 
the deepening of devotion. 

But devotion to whom? Again the answer 
is written large in all the gospel records. De¬ 
votion, first of all, to God. The secret of the 
success of Jesus lay in his constant love for 


8 Reprinted by permission of the Macmillan Company, from The Widow 
in the Bye Street, Collected Poems, by John Masefield. 

32 



FOUNDATIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 


God. Men who paid attention to his message 
were bound to gain the impression that “this 
is life—to know God.” The consciousness of 
God was foremost in his life. There is little 
to fear from the atheism that says there is 
no God. Most thinking folks are sane enough 
to perceive how foolish it is to “lecture on 
the corpse of religion when it is all the time 
alive and laughing at you.” What we need to 
fear is the atheism that agrees to God but 
does not agree with Him; that acknowledges 
His existence, but does not seek His life. The 
God who is revealed in Jesus is achieved in 
life. Life is life only if we experience God. 
And “he that loveth not knoweth not God, 
for God is love.” 

Let us be perfectly clear at this point. Know¬ 
ing God does not depend upon assent to 
a creed. Of late, putting up creeds as straw 
men to be adroitly knocked down has been 
grossly overworked. Yet creeds that were 
made to express life have been made to repress 
it. The implements of religion have some¬ 
times served as impediments to finding God. 
But not always. It is simply not true that 

“When whelmed are altar, priest and creed. 
When all the faiths have passed; 

33 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


Perhaps, from darkening incense freed, 

God may emerge at last .” 6 

For those who have thus far known God best 
have highly valued “altar, priest and creed,” 
and prophet and pulpit have shared this 
esteem. So long as man endures he will try 
to crowd into language the experience that is 
his. What we need to recognize is that creeds 
at their best only show what men have found 
out about God; it takes life to show that we 
ourselves have found Him. Browning had the 
truth of it: 

“ ... To know 

Rather consists in opening a way 
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape. 
Than in effecting entry for a light 
Supposed to be without.” 

Some words from the pen of Lyman Abbott, 
whose writings conclusively demonstrate that 
an old man can have young ideas, are relevant 
here: “Christ does not teach us about God; he 
makes us acquainted with God. ... To him 
God was not a hypothesis but a personal and 
intimate friend. He did not from a study of 

6 “RevelationsNew Poems, p. 90, by William Watson. Dodd, Mead 
and Company, Publishers, New York City. 

34 



FOUNDATIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 


the creation arrive at the conclusion that 
there is a Creator, as the scientist from a 
study of the arrowheads found in rocks arrives 
at the conclusion that there was a prehistoric 
man. He was acquainted with God as a child 
is acquainted with his father, and his aim was, 
not to demonstrate by the scientific method 
the existence of a Creator, but to impart to 
his disciples a spirit of filial obedience which 
would give to them an experience of com¬ 
panionship with God similar to his own. He 
himself lived in continual and unbroken com¬ 
panionship with God; and he sought to inspire 
in his disciples a spirit which would enable 
them to live in similar companionship .” 7 
To set out on one’s career without God is 
to put one’s life into bankruptcy before 
business has begun. God must be given pre¬ 
eminence. For life, he must come first. For 
life, he must stay first. He must be the per¬ 
manent passion. To place him second is to 
place him last. God must be paramount and 
basic. He is the great necessity. He is the 
essential. God is life. And life is growth in 
God. To grow in God is to grow like him. 

7 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from What 
Christianity Means to Me, by Lyman Abbott. 

35 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 

v / 

“Deeply seen, the moral ideal is not something 
which you wish to possess as something exter¬ 
nal to you, but it is something that you wish 
to become. Unless growth in truth or goodness 
is in the last resort your growth, whatever 
else it is, it is meaningless .” 8 To know God 
is not merely to like him; it is to grow like 
him. People saw “the light of the knowledge 
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 
How far have we progressed in God-expression? 

Jesus met the test at the beginning of his 
career. He had to choose between following 
God and the pursuit of self. His three tempta¬ 
tions are summed up in three words, “Cast 
thyself down.” This is still the Satanic whisper: 
“Lower yourself; be less than God intends you 
to be; be content with a low purpose.” To 
temptations such as these Jesus refused to suc¬ 
cumb. He accounted the reign of God supreme. 
He refused to take orders from his purse. 
Neither praise nor gain could have dominion 
over him. He sought first the Kingdom. 

Stewardship is founded upon this allegiance 
to God. It comes to admonish us all that 
the basis of life must be clear That must be 

8 The Truths We Live By, Jay William Hudson. D. Appleton and Co., 
Publishers, New York City. 


36 



FOUNDATIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 


settled first. The fundamental question is 
how to keep life related to God. With this 
settled all other problems take on aspects of 
light. With this unsettled other problems grope 
at noonday as in the night. Until you deter¬ 
mine the drift of life your life will be adrift. 
To be partner with Christ in the purpose of God 
is the goal of stewardship. 

But more remains to be said. We cannot 
interpret Jesus except in terms of service. 
We measure his success by his love of man. 
God 


“ . . . had given him birth 
To brother all the sons of earth .” 9 


He lived for others. He said: “I came that 
ye might have.” The ages are debtor to him. 
When he plumbed the depths of his own mo¬ 
tives he confessed, “For their sakes I sanctify 
myself.” He owned to being “a witness to 
the truth.” At a service conducted in his 
home town he spoke these weighty phrases: 
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me: for he 
has consecrated me to preach the gospel to 
the poor, he has sent me to proclaim release 


9 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from The 
Everlasting Mercy, Collected Poems, by John Masefield. 

37 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


for captives and recovery of sight for the 
blind, to set free the oppressed, to proclaim 
the Lord’s year of favor.” His characteristic 
attitude was: “I go to prepare . . . for you.” 
His consecration was social. The ultimate im¬ 
pression he created was that “God so loved 
the world that he sent” him. He humanized 
religion. Henceforth, the service of God 
meant the service of man. 

Now that we are free to read the New Testa¬ 
ment without the blur of literalism, no truth 
stands out more clearly than that Christianity 
is God's attempt to bring mankind to manhood. 
To those who had barely existence, but much 
oppression and woe, he promised abundant 
life. To people who had far more excuse for 
their littleness than we, he said: “ Pagans make 
food and drink their aim in life, but your 
Father knows quite well that you need that; 
only seek his Realm, and it will be yours over 
and above.” How often he was moved with 
compassion toward those who seemed shep- 
herdless sheep. The tug of the world was at 
his heart! To say that he had respect for life 
is to put the truth mildly. It is more accurate 
to say that he reverenced life. With unabated 

enthusiasm he labored for its sake. To deal 

38 


FOUNDATIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 


with life is to tread on holy ground. Life is 
the bush that burns but is not consumed. 

Many respect life with their theories who 
desecrate it with their practice. This dual 
attitude means spiritual suicide. It is easy 
enough to give casual consent to the sublim¬ 
ity of life. In some respects nothing is more 
commonly acknowledged. We agree that the 
child of the bootblack has as much right to 
the best medical service as the child of the 
millionaire. But to put reverence for life into 
practice is a different thing by far. Our service 
must articulate our love . Conversion must bring 
not only newness of joy but newness of life. 
Nothing short of this will move us to realign 
our social order so that it ministers to life. 
Nothing short of this can weld the nations 
into the solidarity of saviourhood. Christ, 
proceeded on the assumption that life responds 
to life. The keepers of the house of greed 
may well tremble at thought of this Christian 
appraisal of life. Once it becomes dominant 
the realm of Mammon shall wither into deso¬ 
lation and the light shall be darkened in the 
heavens thereof. The Christian God desires 
fullness of life for all his children, and no one and 

nothing has the right to withhold it from them. 

39 


v 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


The mark of stewardship in a follower of 
Jesus is this social sincerity . Conscious that 
“this is life: to know God,” he will remember 
that, as Amiel phrased it, “Christianity, mys¬ 
tical in its root, is practical in its fruits.” In 
the light of the meaning of life he will read 
his mission in life. Life’s worth will determine 
life’s work. He will not deliberately choose 
a profession or business inconsistent with or 
merely neutral toward his Christian confession. 
If necessity has forced him into employment 
not congenial to the advancement of the 
Christian cause, he will be instant in season 
and out to evince his concern for the day when 
the will of God shall be done. 

For young folks this issue of social sincerity 
admits of no delay. Shrink from the thought 
as some may, in youth we choose for life! 
Statistics furnish copious proof that the Chris¬ 
tian cause depends upon the choice of youths. 
There are some who at middle age ask of the 
Lord, “Revive thy work in the midst of the 
years.” But most of these who failed to 
settle this question in youth find themselves 
victims to “the destruction that wasteth at 
noonday.” They have never tasted life, yet 

they glibly talk of disillusionment! Speaking 

40 


FOUNDATIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 


broadly, we either give Christ allegiance in 
the days of our youth or we give it not at all. 

Moreover, youth cannot put off the day of 
decision with assurance that it will recur. 
We cannot halt the years to “halt between 
two opinions.” We must answer with our 
lives. We do! Ever the answer is an attitude. 
What is my life to do? hinges upon the ques¬ 
tion, Whose is my life to be? When God has 
you he can direct yours. You will discern 
God’s directions for your life when you go 
God’s direction with your life. You will be 
saved to serve. 

This social sincerity, this genuine determina¬ 
tion to lift mankind to God, is needed the 
more because of the world which we to-day 
confront. “The religious problem of our day 
is not a problem in metaphysics or theology; 
it is a problem in the practical values of human 
living.” Thus an observant writer, Dr. Charles 
A. Ellwood, declares, and adds: “There is 
unfortunately abundant evidence just at pres¬ 
ent in the civilized world of reversion to a 
lower plane of moral and religious values than 
existed a generation ago;. . . and while there 
may be many grounds for encouragement, 

... it is useless to deny or to gloss over the 

41 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


facts which seem to indicate partial social, 

moral, and religious retrogression .” 10 An in¬ 
teresting sidelight on this is the return to 

earlier religious standards on the part of 
many who still take to themselves the name 
of Christ. We thus find Christian ethics 
submerged by Jewish concepts and New- 
Testament standards of life forsaken for Old- 
Testament standards of belief. It has been 
well said that a single page could hold all the 
utterances of Jesus upon such subjects as the 
soul and death and the hereafter. His concern 
was with life. “Christianity,” says Bishop 
Gore, “came out into the world as The way.’ 
It was a life before it was a doctrine.” The 
Christian faith is inevitably social. The reso¬ 
lute effort to make society godlike will save 
the church from the contamination of these 
lower types. The social awakening will save 
our spiritual life from the sleep of death. 

Stewardship, then, is founded upon social 
spirituality. Professor Edward G. Conklin, in 
The Direction of Human Evolution , u reminds 
us that “in the past religion has dealt to a 

10 Reprinted by permission of the Macmillan Company, from The 
Reconstruction of Religion, by Charles A. Ellwood. 

11 Charles Scribner’s Sons, Publishers, New York City. 

42 



FOUNDATIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 


large extent with the individual and his rela¬ 
tion to God; its chief concern was the salva¬ 
tion of individual souls and their preparation 
for a future life; it has been largely egocentric. 
The religion of the future must more and more 
deal with the salvation of society; it must be 
ethnocentric” And Edward Caird once wrote, 
“A man’s religion is the expression of his 
ultimate attitude toward the universe.” Unless 
our consciousness of God means a concern for 
humanity we worship some deity other than 
the Father of our Lord. After Pentecost had 
come his followers were actuated by this social 
sense of the spiritual. Slaves walked with sing¬ 
ing hearts and heads erect, conscious of a 
relationship that made them free in bondage. 
These early Christians had a self-esteem that 
led to esteem for others. Anything short of 
this they knew to be false to the spirit of 
Christ. But the church was unable to keep 
this vision. Its profound and simple reverence 
for life was soon contaminated by alien con¬ 
tacts and soon was fairly smothered beneath 
the load of Roman paganism. Small wonder 
that the church in the Middle Ages laid so 
little emphasis on regard for human life. The 
ancient Christian esteem for life began to come 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


back into its own with the challenging doctrine 
of the priesthood of believers which Martin 
Luther taught. According to it, the fulfill¬ 
ment of one’s devotional life lies within one’s 
own reach. But Luther did not follow out 
the logic of this thought. Why should any 
realm of endeavor strive for less than to fill 
life full? When Wesley claimed the world 
for his parish the viewpoint that reverences 
men began to be reclaimed. The struggle is 
still on. Old prejudices die hard and slow. 
Man has a hard time of it to respect mankind. 
But the old order changeth. Woodrow Wilson’s 
statement is now seen to be true: “The truths 
that are not translated into lives are dead 
truths.” Stewardship comes to ask, “Do you 
believe in life as Christ believed in it?” 

Professor Giddings attributes history to the 

adventurers. Jesus thought faith. And he 

always looked for it. He never spoke of fate. 

Fate says that what happens must happen; 

faith says that what must happen happens. 

Fate is the religion of Islam, and Islam means, 

“I submit to God’s plan.” Faith is the religion 

of Christianity, and Christianity means, “I 

subscribe to God’s plan.” One who subscribes 

to God's plan embraces stewardship. He will 

44 


FOUNDATIONS OF STEWARDSHIP 


not be cowed by the voice of tradition or the 
clamor of the crowd. He will dare to think 
unpopular thoughts. Christ was no innocuous 
Apollo at play on some Olympian mountain. 
He had problems to face and faced them with¬ 
out flinching at the exactions they involved. 
“He set his face steadfastly to go to Jeru¬ 
salem.” He took a short-cut to death. He 
hurled his life after his faith. His ideas were 
his ideals. Brave without bravado, he saved 
others and spared not himself. His way of 
thinking infuriated the religious leaders of 
his day. He insisted upon thinking all things 
through to God. This is the wont of steward¬ 
ship. The leaders of his day could not under¬ 
stand it. Their thoughts had root in tradition. 
The sweep of their minds reached the fathers. 
But Jesus brushed past tradition to God. 
They said, “It hath been said.” Such argu¬ 
ments left Jesus unmoved. He answered, “But 
I say,” and reasoned up to God. He never 
lost God out of mind. A man who does that 
courts hatred. He invites death. Edward 
Arlington Robinson fancies John Brown say¬ 
ing to his wife: 

“Now and again to some lone soul or other 

God speaks and there is hanging to be done,” 

45 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


and ending the conversation with these words: 
“I shall have more to say when I am dead .” 12 
For such sacrifice is itself creative. Such 
death alone saves life. Stewardship spells 
sacrifice. Stewardship roots in the cross. It 
seeks to make Christians consistent with Christ. 

To review what has thus far been said: 
Stewardship is founded on the sense of reach 
for God and humankind. Stewards are in 
earnest for the reign of God on earth. They 
therefore seek to make society spiritual. They 
know of no other way to follow Jesus Christ. 


12 “John Brown.” Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Com¬ 
pany, from Collected, Poems , by Edwin Arlington Robinson. 


46 































“Store up no treasures for yourselves on earth, 
where moth and rust corrode, 
where thieves break through and steal: 
store up treasures for yourselves in heaven, 
where neither moth nor rust corrode, 
where thieves do not break in and steal. 

For where your treasure lies, 
your heart will lie there too. 

The eye is the lamp of the body: 
so, if your eye is generous, 

the whole of your body will be illumined, 
but if your eye is selfish, 

the whole of your body will be darkened. 
And if your very light turns dark, 
then—what a darkness it is! 

No one can serve two masters: 

either he will hate the one and love the 
other, or else he will stand by the one 
and despise the other— 
you cannot serve both God and Mam¬ 
mon. . . . 

Seek God’s Realm and his goodness. . . .” 

— Jesus. 

“Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”— 
Ralph Waldo Emerson. 


48 


CHAPTER III 
SOCIAL CHRISTIANS 

The challenge of stewardship has such an 
intimate bearing upon every one of us that 
its total effect upon life ought to be thought 
through. Knowing the God of our Lord Jesus 
Christ and securing his reign in the earth is 
the intent of Christian life. Stewardship says 
that the content of life must be an aid to this. 
When Jesus had to decide his life he had to 
face the temptation which all of us have to 
face. He was tempted to give content precedence 
over intent. It was suggested that he dethrone 
himself and enthrone things. As has been 
previously noted, “Cast thyself down,” was 
the Satanic proposal, and the Satanic promise 
was “All these things will I give thee.” But 
Jesus was above the lure of things. This is 
why he questioned, earnestly: “Know ye not 
that I must be about my Father’s business?” 
He was in tent upon the intent of life. He 

repudiated the notion that a man’s life con- 

49 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


sists in the abundance of the things he pos¬ 
sesses—yet how the notion lingers still! He 
refused to let things have dominion over him. 
It was impossible for him to be con tent with 
content. He resolved to be true to the intent 
of life or die in the attempt. And die he did! 
Yet when was death life-saving more than 
his? Kipling reports that “three hundred 
miles of cannon spoke when the master-gunner 
died.” This was but as a whisper compared 
to the voice that spoke when the Master- 
Saviour died, and that speaks still and still 
shall speak because he lives! 

He who decides to be true to the intent 
of life has a fight on his hands. The tempta¬ 
tion to let the content of life subvert the 
intent of it assails us constantly. For one 
thing, the contents of life are ever before us 
and with us. We cannot get quit of them. 
They are catalogued in daily and magazine; 
they call to us from the highway and talk to 
us on the street; a resistless propaganda is 
carried on in their behalf. Pressing into service 
all that genius has devised in electricity, there 
is proclaimed to us from the housetops how 
much life can contain. There never was a 

day when the contents of life received such 

50 


SOCIAL CHRISTIANS 


publicity. Older people forget that this con¬ 
stant emphasis on things was not thus thrust 
upon them in their formative years. But the 
young people of to-day are reared in this 
atmosphere. It is easier, therefore, for them 
to assume that the content view of life is the 
normal view to take. Could the intent of life 
be advertised as incessantly as its content, 
what might not be wrought on the earth? 
It is a sobering reflection that good advertising 
so seldom lends itself to advertising the best. 
As Dr. Weymouth translates it, Jesus said: 
“Do not even begin to be anxious, asking 
‘What shall we eat?’ ‘What shall we drink?’ 
‘What shall we wear?’ Is not life more precious 
than food and the body than its clothing?” 
But business worries us night and day with 
the very things Jesus told us not to worry 
about. At times it appears perniciously per¬ 
sistent to keep us from “ranges beyond these 
mud walls of the flesh.” 

Not only does what life has rather than 
what life is rivet our attention, but it com¬ 
mands our talent and our time. We labor 
not only for, but at, the bread that perisheth. 
Most of us find ourselves daily at work at the 

contents of life. One may well question the 

51 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


\ 


sanity of a social order that keeps us down 
so to the grindstone of things. Jesus never 
forgot that “life is more than food.” One 
lunatic surpassed in worth a herd of Gadarene 
swine. He was aware that constant attach¬ 
ment to the content of life may easily develop 
into treacherous attachment for the content 
of life. Hence his counsel to that fine young 
man to sell what he had and give it away 
and follow him: minus content, plus intent. 
Jesus observed that for this young man the 
quantity in life submerged the quality of life. 
He saw with what difficulty the rich would 
enter the kingdom and told of three “prac¬ 
tical’’ worthies whose interest in real estate 
and live stock and marital affairs was such that 
they had the excuse: “ Therefore , I cannot come.” 

When we turn from the things we do for 
pay to the things we do for play, again the 
contents of life stalk in endless procession 
before us. One sometimes has the sense of 
being overwhelmed with the flood of things 
that clamor to be introduced into one’s life. 
Profit and pleasure precede purpose in the 
voices that fall on our ears, and the voice that 
bids us seek first the kingdom is a still small 

voice, scarcely audible. 

52 


SOCIAL CHRISTIANS 


When the content of life is ^t variance with 
the intent of life, ethical dualism ensues , and 
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde set up shop where 
a unified soul once lived. As some one has said, 
we then become money-making or educational 
machines, with the unburied remains of souls 
tagging on behind. Our acts speak louder than 
our words—and sadder—when in things, instead 
of Him, we live and move and have our being: 

“To dress, to call, to dine, to break 
No canon of the social code, 

The little laws that lacqueys make, 

The futile decalogue of mode— 

How many a soul for these things lives 
With pious passion, grave intent! . . . 

And never ev’n in dreams has seen 
The things that are more excellent .” 1 

But this is not the only ill that befalls those 
who turn their backs upon Christian steward¬ 
ship. This content view refuses to stay within 
the confines of mere things. It leaps over into 
the realms of mind and of desire. It is a con¬ 
tagious scourge. The man who is not a steward 
of his property plays traitor to the rest of his 
life. He has thrown his soul out of focus. 

1 The Collected Poems of William Watson, p. 78. Dodd, Mead and Com¬ 
pany, Publishers, New York City. 

53 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


Regard how it works out. Frequently young 
people—and occasionally older folks—turn to 
the Bible to seek information about life rather 
than formation of it. Victims of the content 
view, they pathetically turn the pages for the 
pettiest of problems, expecting to find there 
ready-made the solutions which they seek. In 
the Bible too content rather than intent is 
what they are looking for! Not Why but 
What is the keyword by which they seek 
admission to the secrets of the Book. In 
their eager quest for the letter the spirit 
falls dead at their feet. One is utterly in¬ 
capable of making right use of the content 
of the Bible who does not hold preeminent 
the intent of the Bible. In regard to the 
church similar havoc is wrought. When a 
church service is considered from the angle 
of what it has rather than from the angle of 
what it is, tragedy results. Think on the 
sermon. It is bad enough that the initiated 
layman expects the sermon to be a sort of 
intellectual crazy-quilt that is able to give 
spiritual warmth. But those whose wont it 
is to judge life by what it may contain expect 
the sermon to be an easy page of answers for 
problems given them to work out in the school 



SOCIAL CHRISTIANS 


of life. And they are sure to judge the preach¬ 
er’s success by the amount of money the 
church raised! They fail to see that the minister 
would play false to his mission did he not, 
in the majestic phrase of the Master, and 
quite regardless of finance, help men to “think 
in their hearts.” He must help them to “cast 
the anchor deep beside the shore-lines of 
eternity.” He dares not be the prophet of 
the picayune. He is the proclaimer of that 
eternal purpose, in, of, and for which life 
exists. To the man who is not a steward, 
the man who is contented with the contents 
of life and so thinks God ought to be, his 
words and worth are hidden; they cannot be 
revealed. Of such a man Drink water’s words 
may be quoted with deeper meaning than the 
author perhaps meant with them: 

“Coveting the little, the instant gain, 

The brief security. 

And easy-tongued renown. 

Many will mock the vision that his brain 
Builds to a far, unmeasured monument. 

And many bid his resolutions down 
To the wages of content .” 2 

The nonsteward is prevented from a normal 

2 Abraham, Lincoln , by John Drinkwater. Houghton Mifflin Company, 
Publishers, New York City. 


65 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


social life. In terms of psychology, his ego- 
complex staves off beneficent gregariousness. 
He is controlled by the consciousness of what 
his life can contain. Let no one think of this 
as something to be lightly dismissed. It is 
a deplorable condition, pathetically patholog¬ 
ical. A man with this content-mood can never 
bring proper adjustment between the ego- 
complex and the herd-complex. He is entirely 
lopsided. The instinct for self-preservation is 
old and most profound. It is intended to lead 
us to social seriousness, but when it is stunted 
by greed it inhibits the soul. The acquisition- 
complex reverts to the primitive. There are 
not pathologists enough in the land to begin 
to determine how many enter by way of this 
complex into paranoia. But for this terrible 
plight, the views of the content-view would 
often sound humorous. Concerning one beau¬ 
tiful spirit who had recently been translated, 
a woman of means (content view) said to the 
pastor of her church: “Poor girl, she had so 
little!” And he answered and said unto her: 
“Madam, you are mistaken. You say, ‘Poor 
girl, she had so little!’ You should say, ‘Rich 
girl, she was so much /’ ” Kipling’s bachelor also 

betrays this aberrant mind: “A woman is 

66 




SOCIAL CHRISTIANS 


only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke !” 3 
A common revelation of this content view is 
that it is always measuring people by the 
money they have or make. Does a preacher 
receive a large salary? Then, lo, a successful 
man! To what important conference com¬ 
mittee would Christ have been appointed? 

The tragedy of this content-view can be 
traced further still. The damage is not merely 
to be found in academic terms (or titles!), 
official procedure, passion for statistics, mania 
for methods. Nor is its deepest damage that 
done to evangelism. It has taken this word, 
unquestionably great, denoting a work, unques¬ 
tionably the greatest, robbed it of its grandeur 
and trailed it in the dust. Nor was its work 
at its worst when, in the realm of Life Service, 
it allured young people to a position rather 
than to inure them to a disposition of service 
for God and men. By far the most devilish 
deed to the credit of the content view is that 
it thwarts beyond measure our relationship 
to God. Once the content of life takes ascend¬ 
ency, once the acquisitive is paramount, prayer 
falls from heaven as no Lucifer ever fell. For 

* Poems of Rudyard Kipling. Doubleday, Page & Company, Publishers, 
New York City. 


67 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


prayer is dominant desire and what we wish 
is what we ash. Hence our prayers are often 
contradictions of our prayer. Our attitude 
speaks so loud that God cannot hear what we 
say! If, now, our inmost wish is concerned 
with what prayer will bring us rather than 
what prayer will make us, God will be to us 
a more or less exaggerated Santa Claus and 
will be accorded homage in the ratio that his 
response is favorable to our requests. No one 
wishes to arouse antagonism to prayer that 
shows honest desire. But if things take the 
reins of our lives, we will be driven far afield 
from the highway that leads to God. Then, 
if we retain our interest in God, it will be 
chiefly in his rather than in him. Prayer be¬ 
comes a handy tool rather than a triumphant 
task and a “moral battlefield.” We ask for 
God’s gifts rather than for the Gift of God. 
This is the surpassing sin of all the content 
view. It prevents a real experience of God. 
Its religious aim is circumscribed by individual¬ 
ism. It even thinks of God as a possession. 
At best it says, “God for my life.” It never 
says (or at least, it never means), “My life 
for God.” To say the one without the other 

is to make both impossible. God cannot be 

58 


SOCIAL CHRISTIANS 


ours until we are his. “Behold the goodness 
and the severity of God.” The God who gives 
much requires much. The content view loses 
life because it saves it; the intent view saves 
life because it loses it. 

The steward uses the content for the intent 
of life. He does not, ascetic fashion, regard 
things as barbed-wire entanglements for the 
soul. He accepts them gratefully. But to 
him they are only means by which to work 
God’s will into the lives of men. This he 
never, never forgets. Property must never be 
placed above life. Never may things be 
allowed to jeopardize the soul. He is a first- 
class fighting man for the widow and father¬ 
less and for the unprivileged. He will know 
what pitiful folly it is for a man to throw a 
rock through a window of the mill from which 
he “strikes.” He will know how essentially 
immoral violence always is. But he will at 
least ponder whether the man who throws 
that rock is not registering, in a dim and 
stupid way, his conviction that property must 
not interfere with life. May not his throwing 
stones mean stuffing the ballot box in favor of 
life? Is there nothing to learn for us here? 
The Christian steward will feel that if we quit 

59 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


calling Reds reds, we might stand somewnat 
of a chance to take their yellowness away! 
For the steward will ever remember that goods 
must serve man’s good. Nor will he forget 
that property has a deep relation to life. The 
steward will see that the stomach has dealings 
with the soul. First, said Paul, that which 
is natural, then that which is spiritual. Man’s 
best should not be used for property, but 
property for man’s best. The world will begin 
to turn toward Christ when money-making 
is deemed a means of ministry to men. Nothing 
to-day is more heartening than the defiance 
of greed which the growth of the practice of 
stewardship implies. Love summons the Chris¬ 
tian steward to “bring the best. . . quickly,” 
even for Bolshevist and atheist, and all re¬ 
jected folk. He rejoices if with muscle and 
mind and money he can further humanity. The 
reward of the steward is that, by setting God 
first, he gets “a close-up” on God. The pure in 
heart see God! They appear with him in glory! 

This, then, is the practical issue which 
every person must face. He must choose 
whether he will be ruled by the content or 
intent of life. If so be he chooses content, 

he must reckon well the cost. He will oppose 

60 


SOCIAL CHRISTIANS 


his living to his life. He will be a split per¬ 
sonality, but unconscious of it. Every outlook 
of his life will therefore be distorted. Social 
contacts will suffer at his hands. His way to 
God will be barred. If he seeks for the intent 
of life, he will bless life with brotherhood and 
crown life with God. He will describe his out¬ 
look on life with words that echo these: 

“Only like souls I see the folk thereunder. 

Bound who should conquer, slaves who should 
be kings, 

Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder. 
Sadly contented with a show of things. . . . 

“Then with a rush the intolerable craving 
Shivers through me like a trumpet-call— 

O to save these! to perish for their saving. 

Die for their life, be offered for them all !” 4 

A vote in favor of stewardship makes one a 
social Christian; that one can be Christian 
other than this appears unthinkable. Those 
who seek what life contains seek an alien goal, 
and thus their lives lack, at every point, spir¬ 
itual sensitiveness. But those who are intent 
upon the reign of God are transformed into the 
spirit and mind of Christ. Shall your Chris¬ 
tianity be selfish or be social? 

4 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from “Saint 
Paul,” Collected Poems, p. 131, by Frederic W. H. Myers. 

61 



“A man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho 
fell among robbers who stripped and belabored 
him and then w T ent off leaving him half-dead. Now 
it so chanced that a priest was going down the 
same road, but on seeing him he went past on the 
opposite side. So did a Levite who came to the 
spot; he looked at him but passed on the opposite 
side. However, a Samaritan traveler came to where 
he was and felt pity when he saw him; he went to 
him, bound his wounds up, pouring oil and wine 
into them, mounted him on his own steed, took 
him to an inn, and attended to him. . . . Which of 
these three men, in your opinion, proved a neigh¬ 
bor to the man who fell among the robbers?”— Jesus. 

“Genuine benevolence is invincible .”—Marcus 
Aurelius. 

“Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore 
Of nicely-calculated less or more.” 

—William Wordsworth. 


62 


CHAPTER IV 

THE TITHE AND STEWARDSHIP 

We are prone to substitute an act for an 
attitude. Folks are not social Christians 
because they are tithing ones. Stewardship 
goes far deeper. In the “uprightness of its 
integrity” it must state the truth, at what¬ 
ever cost. 

Though stewardship concerns our possessions 
it does not command the tithe. If you become 
a tither for the sake of stewardship, no fault 
can be found with you. But if you think of 
tithing as the end of stewardship, your thought 
is far afield from the spirit and mind of Christ. 
Tithing may be an expression of but it can 
never be a substitute for stewardship. Bishop 
McDowell tells of a man who boasted because 
that year he had given ten thousand dollars to 
the Christian cause and kept only ninety 
thousand for himself! Tithing hurts that man, 
much though he enjoys it. For it chloroforms 
his conscience; it sidetracks his soul from 
stewardship. 


63 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


Tithing has been extolled as the biblical 
standard. Texts are frequently quoted to 
show that there were three tithes. But no 
one is able to say whether at any time two¬ 
fold or threefold tithing was regarded as the 
law, although scholars are convinced that in 
either case it was “merely theoretical.” 

With singular unanimity biblical scholars 
agree as to the confusion touching the tithe 
(see the Appendix for a completer putting of 
the facts). “The data at our disposal,” says 
Dr. Driver, “do not enable us to write a his¬ 
tory of the tithe .” 1 “The laws of the tithe 
conflict remarkably with one another,” says 
Dr. George B. Gray . 2 And another authority 
asserts that concerning the tithe “the history 
among the Hebrews is far from clear .” 3 And 
this is the steadfast testimony of all eminent 
scholars. That in the face of this men should 
assert for the tithe binding authority seems 

incredible! A fair perusal of Scripture fails 
to bear out their claim. No standard obliga¬ 
tion is indicated there. This is a daring thing 

1 Deuteronomy. Charles Scribner's Sons, Publishers, New York City. 

* Critical Introduction to the Old Testament. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 
Publishers, New York City. 

* The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religion and Knowledge. Funk & 
Wagnalls Company, Publishers, New York City. 

64 



THE TITHE AND STEWARDSHIP 


to say in the face of the frequent claims to the 
contrary. But a study of the evidence per¬ 
mits one to say nothing else. It would be 
strange, of course, were nothing said of the 
tithe. The belief that man’s resources should 
be placed at the service of his religion is as old 
as history. The most primitive of religionists 
sacrifice and make offerings. But the designa¬ 
tion of the tenth was a late development. 
Political and economic ideas frequently make 
their way into religious views. So with the 
tithe. There was a widespread custom among 
ancient peoples of paying one tenth to the 
king. This practice existed among Greeks and 
Romans, Babylonians and Egyptians, as well 
as among the Hebrews. What simpler than to 
honor Deity with the gifts a ruler received? 
If we find in after years that any portion 
given the gods is called by the name of the 
proportion that once was given them, we need 
not be amazed. (In Muhammadan law the 
tithe is sometimes one half or one fourth of 
the tenth.) 

The early Old-Testament sources mention 
the bringing of the firstfruits. They consisted 
of a mere basketful. But in the later codes, 

much littered with confusions, the tithe idea 

65 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


is found. It is sometimes insistent, but seldom 
consistent. Jacob voluntarily bargains with 
his deity on the basis of the tenth: “Of all 
that thou shalt give me I will surely give the 
tenth to thee.” Many years later, eight 
centuries before Christ, Amos seems to think 
of it in terms of religious dues: “Bring your 
sacrifices every morning and your tithes every 
three days.” Five hundred years before Christ, 
the Ezra-Nehemiah date, the demand for the 
tithe stands out: “And I perceived that the 
portions of the Levites had not been given 
them; so that the Levites and the singers, 
that did the work, were fled every one to his 
own field. Then I contended with the rulers 
and said, Why is the house of God forsaken? 
And I gathered them together, and set them 
in their place. Then brought all Judah the 
tithe of the grain and the new wine and the 
oil unto the treasuries. And I made treasurers 
over the treasuries, . . . and their business was 
to distribute unto their brethren. Remember 
me, O my God, concerning this, and wipe 
not out my good deeds that I have done for 
the house of my God, and for the observances 
thereof.” The tithe is in the Old Testament, 
but it is not the only thing there. It is not 


THE TITHE AND STEWARDSHIP 


the exclusive requirement. There were other 
standards, as one may read for oneself (see 
Lev. 23. 9-41; Exod. 30. 11-16; Num. 3. 44-51, 
and similar passages). There is no standard 
method. And even if there were, it is too late 
in the day for anyone to attempt to hold up 
thoughtful people at the point of a text, unless 
that text is clearly aligned with the spirit and 
truth of Christ. Those who stand fast in the 
liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free 
will never believe that because a method was 
once expected of the Jew it therefore is expected 
of the Christian. Proof-texts no longer have 
the power to lord it over us. 

Let us note something else about the tithe. 
It is not the standard method, and there is 
no standard motive that accounts for it! In 
the fourteenth chapter of Deuteronomy we 
read that the tithe must be eaten in the sacred 
place. In case one lived too far to convey it 
conveniently, he could change it into money 
and at the sacred place “thou shalt bestow 
that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth 
after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for 
strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul de¬ 
sire th: and thou shalt eat there before the 

Lord thy God, . . . thou, and thine household.” 

67 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


(A kindly editor one day appended a post¬ 
script, suggesting that the Levites—the re¬ 
ligious workers—get a share of it!) That a 
deity could be pleased with such self-indulgence 
on the part of his followers seems unbelievable 
now. We are sure that the God and Father 
of our Lord would not have it so. He would 
be happier if his people ascribed to him as 
well as to themselves that nobler motive for 
the tithe found in the injunction to keep it 
in the villages and towns and distribute it 
among the poor. That would be more like 
him. The eighteenth of Numbers records a 
motive more basic still: “And, behold, I have 
given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel 
for an inheritance, for their service which they 
serve, even the service of the tabernacle of 
the congregation.” For it is one thing to 
alleviate poverty and quite another to spir¬ 
itualize a nation. Public piety will root pov¬ 
erty up and out. But one cannot be certain 
that the motive credited to God in the 
“Priestly” code retains his respect for the 
tithe. We get inklings of a sordid struggle 
for the possession of the tithes between the 
priests and the Levites. The priests won out 
and the record reports God as favoring their 


THE TITHE AND STEWARDSHIP 

side. With this medley of motives the Old 
Testament speaks of the tithe! There is no 
biblical standard; there is no static statute on 
it. The Christian, be it said once more, looks 
at the Bible through Jesus, and will own no 
God save the one who lived in him! Thus we 
know that he is no longer driving money- 
bargains with Jacobs; instead he is driving 
out those who try so to bargain with him. 
We will not believe that with monev we can 
bribe the God of the race. The God of Amos 
answers the description of the Father of Jesus 
Christ: “Yea, though ye offer me your burnt- 
offerings and your meal-offerings, I will not 
accept them; neither will I regard the peace- 
offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away 
from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not 
hear the melody of thy viols. But let judg¬ 
ment run down as waters, and righteousness 
as a mighty stream.” For a tithe is of value 
only when the right motive is back of it. 

It was with the motive and not with the 

method that Jesus was concerned. Champions 

of the tithe quote with much approval Christ’s 

mention of the tithe as a requirement of the 

law which existed in his day; but it seldom 

occurs to them that there is no more sugges- 

69 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


tion of approval here than there is suggestion 
of ridicule in his story of the Pharisee who 
climaxed his prayer with the boast, “On all 
my income I pay tithes.” Indeed, there is 
less. The passage is worth studying. In the 
language of Dr. Weymouth, 4 this is what Jesus 
said: “Alas for you, Scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites, for you pay the tithe on mint, 
dill and cumin, while you have neglected the 
weightier requirements of the Law—just judg¬ 
ment, mercy, and faithful dealing. These 
things you ought to have done, and yet you 
ought not to have left the others undone. 
You blind guides, straining out the gnat while 
you gulp down the camel! Alas for you. Scribes 
and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you wash clean 
the outside of the cup or dish, while within 
they are full of greed and self-indulgence 
(uncurbed animal passions).” Here is the 
picture: “We are shown the man polishing 
his cup, elaborately and carefully; for he lays 
great importance on the cleanness of his cup; 
but he forgets to clean the inside. Most 
people drink from the inside, but the Pharisee 
forgot it, dirty as it was, and left it untouched. 

4 The New Testament in Modern Speech, Richard Francis Weymouth. 
The Pilgrim Press, Publishers, Boston. 

70 



THE TITHE AND STEWARDSHIP 


Then he sets about straining what he is going 
to drink—another elaborate process; he holds a 
piece of muslin over the cup and pours with 
care; he pauses—he sees a mosquito; he has 
caught it in time and flicks it away; he is safe 
and he will not swallow it. And then, adds 
Jesus, he swallowed a camel. How many of 
us have ever pictured the process, and the 
series of sensations, as the long, hairy neck 
slid down the throat of the Pharisee—all that 
amplitude of loose-hung anatomy—the hump— 
two humps—both of them slid down—and he 
never noticed—and the legs—all of them— 
with whole outfit of knees and big, padded 
feet. The Pharisee swallowed a camel—and 
never noticed it .” 5 To cull from this master¬ 
ful statement one phrase: “These things you 
ought to have done,” as an indorsement of 
tithing per se shows how slow of heart we are 
to understand. By what peculiar twist of logic 
can a commendation of a deed be made into 
the recommendation of a percentage? He was 
discussing their condition rather than their 
law. They neglected the great for the small, 
because their vision was dull and their taste 


5 The Jesus of History, by T. R. Glover. Association Press, Publishers, 
New York City. 

71 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


awry! They were punctilious about tithing, 
while weightier matters went by the board. 
It is, rather, as if Jesus had said: “What you 
need is not a law of proportion but a sense of 
proportion!” 

Christ’s attitude toward money admits of 
no legalism. The Pharisees took pride in their 
pious proportioning. But Jesus saw that 
their careful casuistry fostered ethical dualism. 
They scrupulously set apart a tenth of the 
tiny kitchen herbs, and then devoured widows’ 
houses despite their long prayers. Tithing 
itself is not Christian; only the viewpoint of 
Jesus can ever make it so. Jesus has a dis¬ 
quieting habit of thinking in totality. His 
mind always unified concepts. He saw things 
steadily and he saw them whole. He knew 
that our hearts and our treasures keep steady 
company. He does not get us until he gets 
ours. Hence the testing exaction placed upon 
the fine young man who had always kept the 
law: “Sell all you have; give the money to the 
poor and you will have treasure in heaven; 
then come, take up the cross, and follow me.” 
This command proved too much for the youth; 
it makes us squirm to-day! It is, alas! not 
true that a fool and his money are soon parted; 


THE TITHE AND STEWARDSHIP 

a fool and his money stay close. When Zac- 
chseus, head of taxgatherers, made the promise: 
“I will give the half of all I have, Lord, to the 
poor, and if I have cheated anybody I will 
give him back four times as much/’ Christ 
perceived at once that salvation had come to 
that house. Suppose now that Zacchseus had 
promised to pay the tithe! Would that have 
burst Christ’s enthusiasm into conflagration? 
Let a man catch Christ’s conviction about life 
and at once his percentage shifts from the 
basis of a rule to the basis of ability; nay, to 
the basis of love. This accounts for the shout 
of triumph that leaped from the lips of our 
Lord one day as “he watched the people putting 
their money into the treasury. A number of 
the rich were putting in large sums; but a poor 
widow came up and put in two little coins 
amounting to a halfpenny. And he called his 
disciples and said to them, T tell you truly, 
this poor widow has put in more than all who 
have put their money into the treasury; for 
they have all put in their contribution out of 
their surplus, but she has given out of her 
neediness all she possessed, her whole living.’ ” 
If we have ears to hear, we know that he still 

invites our attention to such impractical per- 

73 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


sons to-day. But many are reluctant to listen; 
it is discomfiting and we must keep sane. . . . 
It is expensive to be an expansive soul. But 
since we must be religious, we compromise on 
the tithe! That pleases God and does not 
hurt the “middle-class” citizens’ comfort. Thus 
we choke on the mosquito and gulp down the 
camel, while once again 

“ . . . upon the Tree, 

Christ’s wounds break in fresh agony .” 6 * 8 

The tithe as a legalistic requirement is alien 
to the spirit of Christ. The subsequent history 
of the tithe is unsavory. Space does not 
permit its full recital here. A reference or two 
must suffice. In the early church the custom 
of consecrating to religious purposes a tenth 
of the income was voluntary. It was made 
obligatory by the Council of Tours (567) and 
the second Council of Macon (585) enjoined 
its payment under pains of excommunication. 
Charlemagne extended the practice to all of 
his domain. The Popes, whose business acumen 
was usually far superior to their spiritual con¬ 
cern, welcomed with open arms this effective 

6 “The Churches.” The Vision Splendid, by John Oxenham, Copyright, 

1917. George H. Doran Company, Publishers. 

74 



THE TITHE AND STEWARDSHIP 


method of financial buttressing. Where papal 
power waned the clergy were nothing loath 
to avail themselves of it. Things came to 
such a pass in England that when a peasant 
died the priest would visit the home, not to 
comfort the bereaved, but to claim the best 
cow and the coverlet of the bed, or to collect 
the deceased’s outer garment! The church, or, 
rather, the clergy became holders of property 
of immense value in consequence of the tithe. 
Because of this, probably more than because of 
the spiritual influence, they came to a large share 
of political power. One could write an interest¬ 
ing thesis on the proposition that the social 
gospel was prevented from coming to expression 
by the wealth the clergy had. Read how in 
France (in the Estates General of 1789) the 
clergy joined hands with the nobility to defeat 
the “third estate,” though this proved a case 
where the worm turned in resistless wrath. 
Not infrequently the church, with its financial 
prowess, humbled governments. One cause for 
the Reformation was the wish of States to get 
free from the domination the church was able 
to impose by its economic strength. Yet not 
even the Reformation could remove the blight. 
In Protestant countries the tax for the clergy 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


continued, and the basis was usually the tithe. 7 
A study of the “state” churches is illuminating 
as to the financial opportunism of their leaders, 
whatever the creed they confessed. Not until 
1869 were tithes totally abolished in England 
under the Disestablishment Act. It is con¬ 
ceivable, of course, that the tithe might have 
gone to good purposes instead of for the 
aggrandizement of the leaders of the church. 
The abuse of the tithe does not argue the 
injustice of paying it. The point we are making, 
however, is that those who talk of the tithe 
as a “historic revelation” of the will of God 
will find history laughing at them! 

It might also be argued that the tithe idea 
works considerable damage to-day. But thus 
far our train of thought has been largely 
negative. It will be conducive to healthy 
mindedness if we resort to the positive now. 
There is hope for the tithe! Thousands of 
devout people practice the giving of it. They 
do so in high devotion to the democracy of 
God. They believe that the church has a 
program through which the world can be 

7 The point was hardly anywhere made that the exaction of the tithe 
is reprehensible. Only the Anabaptists in Switzerland asserted that, 
Christians owed no tithes. Luther held that tithes should be paid to the 
temporal sovereigns. 


76 



THE TITHE AND STEWARDSHIP 


saved. In the presence of those fine souls 
whose income is below normal, and who yet 
out of their necessity contribute a tenth to 
God’s work, it behooves every thoughtful 
person to uncover his head and be reverent. 
The world is getting better because it is giving 
better. Tithing has been overrated, but it is 
quite possible to underrate it too. It has a 
practical aspect which no one can gainsay. 
The church’s work abroad and at home would 
fail if these multitudes ceased their payment 
of the tithe. Were thousands of others to 
begin tithing now, the church would receive 
an impetus that would cheer the heart of God. 
What might not happen in this world were 
all Christians to give the tenth of their income 
for a single generation? Given systematic 
support, the church can belt the globe with 
the good news of its Lord. Tithing to this 
purpose has a glory that cannot be dimmed! 
At least with one tenth of one’s income one 
thus does the Christian thing. Some protest 
against tithing because they do not wish to 
give so much to the church or to any cause. 
Their protests reek to heaven. There are 
people who never voluntarily peruse any tale 
of sacrifice, whose ears never willingly admit 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


speech on generosity. They deem themselves 
too practical to be so sentimental. They hold 
it better to receive than to give. Their ail¬ 
ment is enlargement of the acquisitive instinct, 
which, being interpreted, is ensmallment of 
the soul. The walls of stinginess, erected for 
self-protection, treacherously shut out the 
breath of life, so that the soul starves long 
before the body does. In the temple of the 
spirit, where song and service should companion 
life, only the blasphemy of greed resounds by 
day and night! 

“But shop each day and all night long! 

Friend, your good angel slept; your star 
Suffered eclipse; fate did you wrong! 

From where these sort of treasures are 
There should our hearts be: Christ, how far!” 

There can be no doubt that for people in 
moderate circumstances this percentage pro¬ 
vides a working basis for benevolence—though 
not a rigid rule. Indeed, one might go further. 
After a pastorate of several years in an indus¬ 
trial group, the writer cannot recall a single 
instance of a person tithing for a reasonable 
period of time to whom it did not prove of 

genuine benefit! Always there is a new joy 

78 



THE TITHE AND STEWARDSHIP 


and a new thrift: joy in the consciousness of 
self-denial for an unselfish cause; thrift from 
the living within one’s income which such 
sacrifice begets. To be sure 

. . . thrift itself 

May be a sort of slow, unwholesome fire, 

That eats away to dust the life that feeds it .” 8 

But that occurs when thrift means the selfish¬ 
ness that keeps, not when thrift means the 
sacrifice that spends. That people 4 ‘make 
money” on tithing is easy to understand. 
In the truest sense of the word, the habit 
makes them thrifty. It is this latter fact that 
makes people say that they make money on 
tithing. Who, then, shall make bold to advise 
people against it? One may well hesitate to 
devote less than this proportion for the pur¬ 
pose of maintaining and increasing the effi¬ 
ciency of the church and other agencies for the 
social good. Since for the educating of chil¬ 
dren, concepts must be made concrete, the 
tenth may well serve as an example and as a 
basis of their support of altruistic work. But 
the tithe becomes a danger if it leaves us too much 

8 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from Collected 
Poems, by Edwin Arlington Robinson. 

79 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


for ourselves. More than six per cent of the 
people in the United States receive an annual 
income of three thousand dollars or over. The 
large proportion of this six per cent is within 
the Christian Church. All things being equal, 
this is sufficiently in excess of the “standard 
wage” for the average family, to make some 
proportion larger than the tenth the fair 
share of support of Christ’s cause. But neither 
a church nor a creed has the right to dictate 
the basis. The service the tithe performs is 
that of a working basis for the most of us. 
It is the practical safeguard which we impose 
upon ourselves to protect the finances of the 
Kingdom. Of course there are dangers. Some 
preach tithing, or practice it, on the basis of 
the dividends it will yield. Tithing thus 
becomes acquisitive rather than altruistic. 
Tithing sometimes fosters a sense of self- 
righteousness. It comes to be regarded as an 
end and not a means. But the larger con¬ 
ception of stewardship, which we try to study 
here, will save us from these snares. 

If there is hope for the tithe, there is also 
hope for the tither. Even though he began 
his habit in response to some wild advocacy 

of legalism, he need not tarry on that level. 

80 


THE TITHE AND STEWARDSHIP 


A low motive often proves the gateway to a 
high one. Most of us started school just be¬ 
cause we had to, while to-day we study for the 
love of it. If we started to tithe, from fear of 
breaking God’s law, or even for its heralded 
returns, we may henceforth give for the sake 
of saviourhood! One had better err on the 
side of generosity than against it. But once 
the error is evident we should forthwith walk 
in the light. 

The chapter should not conclude until men¬ 
tion has been made of the habit of giving the 
major portion of one’s proportion to the church 
itself. This is justifiable, because the church 
can he trusted now! This does not mean, of 
course, that all of its agents can. Glaring 
exceptions can be found. In connectional 
bodies, “district superintendents,” secretaries, 
and others are likely to judge a church by the 
money it raises instead of the work it does. 
Accordingly, such worthies pay appropriate 
homage to pastors and to churches where the 
funds abound, but they have scant love for 
the churches that fail in the quotas desired. 
But the church at large can be trusted. It 
now realizes that it is in business not to receive 

money hut to interpret it, not to collect property 

81 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


but to correct life. But this very interpretation 
requires money and much of it. It is for this 
reason that such financial stress has been laid 
in the campaigns of recent years. On the 
whole, the results have been wholesome. Our 
financial achievements—and greater are on 
the way—have startled us into a consciousness 
of our potentialities. We feel acclimated to 
the Herculean. We realize that our time and 
talent, our treasure and thought, have the 
right to giant tasks. It is now a popular 
pastime to banish the word ‘ ‘failure 5 ’ from 
our vocabulary. We have had a rebirth of 
confidence. If contributions do not now come 
in as fast as they should, this is due, not to 
inability but to ignorance of the work and 
the need. We have set out with great Sclat 
and with much heraldry upon our evangelistic 
heritage; and we dare not fail. This is worth 
while; nothing is more worth while! 

And now let us summarize what we have 
discussed thus far. We have seen that fre¬ 
quently stewardship has been confused with 
tithing. Extravagant claims have been made 
on behalf of the tithe. These claims are not 
sustained by Scripture or history. The tithe 

as a working basis for the support of Chris- 

82 


THE TITHE AND STEWARDSHIP 


tian work has wrought enormous good. But 
tithing, by itself, is not stewardship. It may 
be the expression, but also the repression, of 
our sense of stewardship. It may be a sop to 
conscience or it may be a work of love. What 
it is depends totally upon what our steward¬ 
ship means. To the mission of stewardship, 
then, let us next give thought. 


* 


83 


“The Realm of heaven is like treasure hidden 
in a field; the man who finds it hides it and in his 
delight goes and sells all he possesses and buys 
that field. 

“Again, the Realm of heaven is like a trader in 
search of fine pearls; when he finds a single pearl 
of high price, he is off to sell all he possesses and 
buy it.”— Jesus. 

•. 

“ ... To forget 

For this large prodigality of gold 
That larger generosity of thought— 

These are the fleshly clogs of human greed, 
The fundamental blunders of mankind.” 

—Edivard Arlington Robinson. 1 

“The idea of the moral law is being replaced by 
the idea of the moral end. This moral end is the 
common good, of which goodness is not the only 
element, although the most valuable, for it includes 
all the higher interests of a society. The common 
good cannot be separated from, as it is dependent 
on the total conditions—physical, economic, social, 
political—that affect the peril or security, the 
misery or prosperity, the weal or woe of the society.” 
—Alfred E. Garvie. 2 

1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from “Octaves” 
Collected Poems, p. 107, by Edwin Arlington Robinson. 

2 The Purpose of God in Christ, p. 65, Alfred E. Garvie. Hodder and 
Stoughton, Publishers, New York. 


84 



CHAPTER V 

STEWARDSHIP AND PROPERTY 

There is but one gospel. We often speak of 
two. But even when we do, it is to emphasize 
their oneness. For years the gospel was applied 
to the individual. But persons, like texts, 
are not good if detached: their setting accounts 
for their worth. “No man liveth unto him¬ 
self.” He stands related to others and to all. 
He must act toward the society that acts 
upon him. Hence we speak of the social 
gospel. But neither the individualistic gospel 
nor the social gospel is the gospel by itself. 
It requires the two sides for the one gospel. 
The gospel is the good news of the reign of 
God. It can never be anything else. No one 
and nothing is excluded from this reign. The 
God of personality is the God of society. 
Every realm must own him Lord. 

The gospel proclaims that property must 
promote personality. Stewardship does with 
property what the gospel asks. Stewardship 

is the practice of property for the purposes of 

85 1 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


God. If you prefer sociological language to 
this theological phrase, stewardship is the 
functional, rather than the acquisitive, use of 
property. But perhaps it is better still to put 
it into words that admit of no doubt. Stew¬ 
ardship is the Christian use of things. Superior 
definitions may suggest themselves. What is 
important to remember about it is that steward¬ 
ship is the act of a Christian attitude; that it 
is the conduct of Christian character concern¬ 
ing possessions. It is not merely a question 
of how much of our money we give to the 
church. To be sure, it involves this question. 
But far more is involved. Stewardship is the 
ethic of the gospel as regards property. 

Notice that the words “property” and 
“possessions” are used interchangeably. Will 
not this lead to confusion? There is a deal of 
property that is not in our possession. What 
have we to do with that? It is one thing to 
say that stewardship should apply to “my” 
property. But how can one make a Christian 
use of things he does not possess? More will 
be said about this question in another place. 
But a moment’s reflection will remind us that 
we use many things we do not own. We 

either pay for their use, or in other ways we 

86 


STEWARDSHIP AND PROPERTY 


influence their power and their value. How, 
then, shall we exempt this from the range 
of our stewardship? An idea, said William 
James, becomes true when it fits into the 
totality of our experience. Stewardship fits 
into property wherever it touches our lives. 

But when we speak of property, complicated 
questions come. A definition covering, or, 
what is more important, uncovering, all the 
facts is difficult to find. It requires thought 
to learn what may properly be called property. 
To confine property to “matter” might once 
have sufficed. But it cannot in our day. Just 
where lies the line of demarkation between 
matter and mind, and whether there is such 
a line, are headache-provoking questions philos¬ 
ophers revel in. At present the biologists 
seem to be battering down “the middle wall 
of partition” between matter and life. By 
the invasion of the electron the ground has 
been cut from under old-line atheism. We 
have moved from a static to a dynamic view 
of things. Or, to speak more accurately, we 
are so moving. 

There are times when property is unrecog¬ 
nized as such. Until very recently, our coke 

makers ignorantly wasted “on the desert air” 

87 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


some seven hundred thousand tons of am¬ 
monium salts each year. They did not know 
the value of their waste. Many things once 
“cast as rubbish to the void” are now put 
to our service. Sometimes what is clearly 
property is not thought of as such. What 
do we own more certainly than these bodies 
of ours, and what is there in regard to which 
we need stewardship more? We need to 
remember and never forget that these bodies 
are God’s bodies; he owns them; we possess 
them. It is a sobering reflection that we are 
all and always living in God’s house. God 
does not always serve writs to eject us when 
we defile it. We dwell in the house of the 
Lord by dwelling in these bodies and all too 
frequently we prove undesirable tenants! Yet 
when we speak of property we do not usually 
include our bodies. We have fallen into the 
habit of serious omissions in our talk of 
property. 

Since stewardship has such vast concern 
with property, we must guard against one¬ 
sided discussions of it. Harvey Reeves Cal¬ 
kins, whose book A Man and His Money is 
monumental in the history of the stewardship 

movement, says: “Property and wealth do 

88 



STEWARDSHIP AND PROPERTY 


not inhere in land or houses or crops or mer¬ 
chandise, but in something else that has neither 
form nor substance, yet has immense power 
to influence these material things. Some 
invisible element touches property and it 
stands upon its feet, it moves and throbs with 
life; but when that element is withdrawn 
property falls back again, a dead and inert 
thing. That invisible element is value. It 
cannot be fully defined nor wholly analyzed; 
it can only be observed in its effects, and the 
manner of its working remembered. Value 
in property is like life in a man, like music in 
a harp, like steam in a cylinder, like electricity 
in a coil of wire. . . . Not dead things, what¬ 
soever they are, but the vital element that 
moves them—this is property. When that 
vital element departs property ceases. The 
essence of property is value.” Now it is a good 
thing to be reminded of the value in property. 
We have not thought of it enough. But, in 
order to do so, it is not necessary for us to 
forget the value of property. There must be 
land before there can be land-value. Value 
depends on possibilities. You cannot use 
stones for bread or chloroform for molasses. 

True, there are values apart from things. In 

89 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


many respects religion is value. In the deeper 
realms of life are values things do not touch. 
This is the subtle truth suggested in the pun 
that preachers are poor but well-connected. 
There are values apart from things. But 
apart from things there is no property. Prop¬ 
erty always means material things available for 
satisfying human wants. We emphasize this 
fact when we use the term property-value. 
Once note that property is things, and it is 
perfectly in order to say that property has 
value. We could never know the value of 
things unless we had value and things. They 
are inseparable in property. United they 
stand, divided they fall. All this has bearing 
on stewardship. The church deals in values. 
But it cannot deal justly with them until it 
relates them to things. 

Attempt to translate property in personal 
terms and such a statement as Professor Ely’s, 
that property is “an exclusive right to con¬ 
trol an economic good” may stand you in good 
stead. Only remember to cross-examine this 
word “exclusive.” For it is always within 
limitations that a person has freedom of control 
over things. These limitations sometimes in¬ 
here in the things and at other times in the 

90 


STEWARDSHIP AND PROPERTY 


values placed upon them. It is just these 
limitations into which we must inquire. Mean¬ 
while let us note that freedom of control does 
not mean license. 

But it is not enough to know what property 
may be or what may be done with it. The 
Christian is concerned with what property 
ought to do; with the function of property. 
It was Jesus’ habit to trace things to their 
origin. The religionists of his day were stran¬ 
gers to this scientific bent of mind. They 
went back to tradition, to custom or sacred 
law. But Jesus went back to God. Seen 
through the eyes of Jesus, things all run back 
to God. One hesitates to say that God is 
the owner of all things when one remembers 
the bayonet and whisky and the roulette 
wheel, or that innumerable host of “practical” 
things that have the form of decency but 
deny the power thereof. But to Christian 
thought these things are man’s perversions of 
God’s property. Property is God’s; this is 
the Christian insistence, and from it there 
is no escape. Since the doctrine of evolution 
has brought home to us the immanence of 
God, we can never again think of property 
in a pagan way: 


91 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


“Draw if thou canst, the mystic line, 

Severing rightly his from thine. 

Which is human, which divine.” 

If the transcendence of God leaves us unmoved 
as to stewardship, his immanence ought to 
startle us. Shall we use the expression of 
God for the suppression of his will? “The 
earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” 
and “property in outward goods is but the 
outcome of personality; and all human per¬ 
sonality is the issue and image of the per¬ 
sonality of God. . . . Man’s authority to say 
of anything ‘That is mine,’ rests finally upon 
his power to say T am God’s.’ ” 1 The fact 
of God’s absolute ownership is fundamental 
to stewardship. 

Now, when a man awakes to the truth that 
he is a trustee of God's goods , it at once be¬ 
comes clear to him what his property ought 
to do. For one thing, he sees that his 'property 
should truthfully represent God . It must cast 
no reflection upon his character. When a 
man’s money creates the impression that 
God plays favorites, it belies the conception 
of God as “no respecter of persons.” When 

1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from Property, 
Its Duties and Rights, Essays by Various Authors. 

92 



STEWARDSHIP AND PROPERTY 


a man so uses his money that for some of his 
brothers and sisters life is a burdened existence 
rather than the joyous experience which Jesus 
said God means, his money lies about God. 
When property, in whatever hands, fails to 
bear clear testimony as to the loving father¬ 
liness of the Creator for all his creatures, that 
property is a power of darkness and smites 
God in the face. For it then misrepresents 
God. You do not wonder, do you, that some 
hide from stewardship behind the skirt of 
legalistic tithing? Stewardship is a searchlight 
under which the selfish wince. What is more 
difficult to understand is why “A Dictionary 
of Religion and Ethics” written by modern 
men, should not mention it at all. For a man 
to ask of his holdings that they tell the truth 
about God is an “impractical” exercise in which 
Christians may indulge to the welfare of their 
souls. At any rate, nothing short of this is 
really stewardship. For another thing, he who 
practices stewardship must see to it that his 
property works the will of God. Here again is 
a subject that can only be touched upon here. 
If the heavenly Father desires that the chil¬ 
dren under his reign shall receive more abun¬ 
dant life, what shall we say for property that 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


stunts personality and makes life a mere 
battle for food? And with what acclaim shall 
we greet those whose goods work humanity 
good! Moreover, the trustee of God’s goods 
will not misrepresent his trusteeship. He will 
remember the limited character of his pro¬ 
prietorship. To be sure, taxation and law 
exist to keep him in mind of this. Yet despite 
these a surprising number go on the bland 
assumption of possessive autocracy. The stew¬ 
ard of God will not clamor “to do what I will 
with mine own.” His liberty to control things 
can never turn into license. He will be wary 
of the popular prattle of “property rights,” 
knowing full well that rights are subservient 
to right, and that things must not hold sway 
over personality. He will know that what 
he owns he owes to God, in creation and his¬ 
tory. And the trustee of God’s goods will 
think more of God than of goods . Nonstewards, 
who never can hope to be much more than 
paganized Christians, emulate their progenitors 
by seeking chiefly what God has. At best 
their thought soars to God’s power. So, when 
they get into a bad fix, they invoke the power 
of heaven to help them out of it. When they 

receive a smash-up from a collision with some 

94 


STEWARDSHIP AND PROPERTY 


giant sin, they send out an alarm that the 
wrecking crew of the universe may be rushed 
to the scene. They call that prayer. It stands 
to reason that God desires our interest in his 
things. All that the heavenly Father has is 
at the disposal of his children. An earthly 
father, said Jesus, delights to give good things 
to his children—how much more your Father. 
Said Paul: All things are yours. But though a 
steward is interested in the things God has, 
the center of his interest is in what God is. 
That God reveals himself in things has long 
been a commonplace. We talk of the God of 
nature and do well so to talk of him. The 
steward sees that God can reveal himself 
through property. He is only prevented from 
doing so by our selfishness. Just yet, while 
“the heavens declare his glory,” the earth 
fails “to show forth his handiwork,” for no 
good God would distort his property into 
instruments that impoverish the many and 
unduly enrich the few. Our money must 
show us God, to paraphrase Mr. Britling. 
Just yet our money talks in tones of acquis¬ 
itiveness. The Christian steward desires it 
to speak in accents of saviourhood. He wants 
property to articulate the Personality at the 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


heart of the universe. Some property is already 
utilized to do this in whole or in part. If 
hospitals, churches, schools, and homes voice 
God, property everywhere must come to pro¬ 
claim him. The trustee of God’s goods will 
not be content to hear God only in moments 
of meditation. His God cannot be “cribbed, 
cabined, and confined” to thought; he invades 
all of life. You cannot sever his from him. 
The steward seeks to show God forth in the 
face of property. Or, to put it in other words, 
he has the conviction that property ought to 
do what God wants done. He has an undy¬ 
ing resolve that it shall do nothing else! Prop¬ 
erty is God’s; stewardship is the means of 
exalting him through it. Wealth must worship , 
or at least, must aid in it. 

There is a further way of stating what 
property is given of God to do. Wealth is a 
social product and must serve society. Property 
has a social cause. Society has produced it. 
It required long generations and unnumbered 
hosts of people to make possible the things 
which we value. The material things now 
available for satisfying our wants root largely 
in the past. We reap what was sown long ago. 

At infinite cost and labor our values were pro- 

96 


STEWARDSHIP AND PROPERTY 


duced. Referring to the past does not mean 
reverting to it. It does mean acknowledgment 
of the foundations laid and the structures 
reared by those who went before. Let no 
one suppose that property is something the 
present produced. It is the result of the 
search and study, the struggle and suffering 
of multitudes now gone. They made a great 
investment. We should at least prove to be 
a fair interest on this investment. Not only 
has property a social cause, but it has a social 
life. Property would be worthless the moment 
society ceased. It is only by virtue of society 
that property is worth having. In this day 
of complex activities, it should be apparent 
to all how property is dependent on cooperative 
life. We usually produce but a tiny part of 
a product; the rest of the world joins labors 
to complete and to market it. Manufacture 
and commerce, to mention but a few, show 
how impossible it is for property to live a 
hermit life. Property not only is, but has a 
social effect. Of all things that need to be 
remembered about it this easily stands first. 
It is for freedom of control over things that 
men strive by day and by night. In the mean¬ 
ing of property for society to-day lies chiefly 

97 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 

the disorder of our social order. Now, for the 
trustee of God’s goods this all has significance. 
His stewardship for God means stewardship for 
society . To him, property will speak elo¬ 
quently of the solidarity of sin . There is not 
only a biological transmission of sin, but a 
social transmission of it. The past has its 
share of guilt in making property anti-social. 
The present has deep responsibility for justi¬ 
fying, idealizing, and perpetuating greed and 
for placing economic profit above the pursuit 
of God. “An enlightened conscience cannot 
help feeling a growing sense of responsibility 
and guilt for the common sins under which 
humanity is bound and to which they all 
contribute. . . . Whose hand has never been 
stained with income for which no equivalent 
has been given in service? How many business 
men have promoted the advance of democracy 
in their own industrial kingdom when autocracy 
seemed safer and more efficient? What nation 
has never been drunk with a sense of its glory 
and importance, and which has never seized 
colonial possessions or developed its little 
imperialism when the temptation came its 
way? The sin of all is in each of us, and every 

one of us has scattered seeds of evil, the final 

98 


STEWARDSHIP AND PROPERTY 


multiplied harvest of which no man knows .” 2 
The Christian steward will bring forth fruits 
worthy of repentance with his property. He 
will not let his possession sin against the social 
good. To him property will afford the means 
for social saviour hood. To the extent that he 
directly controls it he will use it to benefit 
mankind. He will not be content with tithing 
even though he may cheerfully tithe. But 
stewardship will be a policy, not toward a 
part of one’s income, but toward all one owns 
or exercises influence upon. The other day 
the representative of the tobacco trust set 
sail for China. He is reported to have said 
he was going in the hope that throughout 
China three lights might be seen every¬ 
where: the light of the gospel, the light of 
oil, the light of the cigarette. Had the re¬ 
porter who interviewed him remembered his 
Sunday-school studies, he might have quoted 
him Scripture: “If the light that is in 
thee be darkness, how great is that dark¬ 
ness!” For the steward, business has no 
business to group the gospel with greed. 
His goods must serve good. Wealth must 

2 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from A Theology 
for the Social Gospel, by Walter Rauschenbusch. 

99 




> ) > 



\ 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 

be used to bring mankind to Christian man¬ 
hood. 

He has another duty with the resources 
furnished by God. Property is an individual 
product and must develop personality. “Modern 
social science shows beyond question that all 
the wealth of the world really resides in men; 
that there are no values of any sort apart 
from men; and that all the values which we 
know are their creation. Human beings, in 
other words, are not only the sole source of 
value, but they are the supreme values. The 
development of the resources which are in 
men, therefore, is the only way in which the 
world can be permanently enriched along any 
line .” 3 Men often say, “Money is myself.” 
What they mean in saying this is that the best 
of their time and strength, and frequently of 
their thought, goes into the making of it. 
And of this there can be no doubt. But to 
speak of money as “myself” is a poor putting 
of the matter. For a man is more than his 
means, unless he has sold out to them! 

“One thing is yours you may not spend: 

Your very inmost self of all— 

* Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from The Re¬ 
construction of Religion , p. 162 , by Charles A. Ellwood. 

100 



STEWARDSHIP AND PROPERTY 


You may not bind it, may not bend. 

Nor stem the river of your call. 

To make for ocean is its end .” 4 

There are those who think that property 
masters personality. To them “every man has 
his price,” and every woman, virtue and all, 
is at the mercy of cash. High-priests of mam¬ 
mon auction off bodies and souls at the call 
of profit. There is a sublime passage in Uncle 
Tom’s Cabin that should be read them in 
church. His owner lashes Tom with the whip— 
and taunts: “Ain’t I yer master? Ain’t yer 
mine now, body and soul? Didn’t I pay down 
twelve hundred dollars for all that is in yer 
old black shell?” But the soul of Tom was 
equal to the occasion. He could not be kept 
down: “No! No!” answered he. “No! No! 
My soul ain’t yours. It’s been bought and 
paid for by One that’s able to keep it. No 
matter! No matter! You can’t harm me!” 
There is a superb consciousness of the suprem¬ 
acy of the spiritual begotten within its followers 
by Christianity which is ominous for the 
keepers of the house of greed. The trustee of 
God’s goods is a partner with the Lord in 
protecting personality. To the extent of his 


4 Ib3en. 


101 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


ability, he will employ neither his talents nor 
those of other men in making goods which no 
one can make with happiness or without loss 
of self-respect. He will not, if he can help it, 
waste his life or the lives of others in func¬ 
tionless acquisitions. It is true, there are 
staggering problems which no one has thus 
far solved. One perceives them when he lets 
industry testify a bit. Man needed clothing 
and solved the problem by making spinning 
wheels. The wheel with its revolutions revolu¬ 
tionized all industry. But the existence of the 
wheels made for the persistence of their use. 
Their creation compelled their operation. Mar¬ 
kets were sought that profit might be had 
and employment assured. It ceased to be 
a question of providing shelter from the cold. 
It has come to be a question of dividends and 
work. The organized totality of mechanical 
contrivances compels humanity to keep them 
going, or else run the risk of perishing. “The 
economic made to serve the vital now makes 
the vital serve the economic.” The creation 
of tools solved one problem, but in that solu¬ 
tion man created an infinitely bigger one . 5 

6 For this line of thought the author is indebted to an article written 
some years ago in The Hibbert Journal by Dr. L. P. Jacks. 

102 



STEWARDSHIP AND PROPERTY 


Just how to protect personality from being less 
than “a living creature among the wheels” is 
a mooted question, with which we should all 
be concerned. The Christian steward would 
be the last to refuse to give it thought. As 
far as possible he will utilize property to pro¬ 
tect personality. Furthermore, he will utilize 
property to 'project personality. It will be his 
concern to make property creative. With 
Browning, he “counts life just the stuff to try 
the soul’s strength on.” Property must de¬ 
velop, not envelop, personality. It must build 
life; it must not break it down. Francis Thomp¬ 
son once shrewdly remarked that “no heathen 
ever saw the same tree as Wordsworth.” Seen 
through the eyes of the steward, property must 
augment and promote personality. That a 
pagan does not see life this way matters not 
to him. The eye of the steward is single. It 
is focused on the soul. He must come to 
expression through his property. He will let 
his money preach in far off lands. He will 
let his gifts bring freedom to bodies and minds; 
and to “spirits in prison,” jailed personalities, 
his wealth will minister. He will use his money 
to improve his mind, enlarge his heart, 

strengthen his good will. He will have “queer” 

103 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


business methods, lest his soul succumb to 
selfishness. A Christian steward will make 
his property godlike, and his property, in 
turn, will make him like his God. 

To many this line of reasoning sounds like 
far-fetched idealism. But to the Christian 
steward all this is merely sense. “There is 
no morning” for those who dismiss as visionary 
the vision which he has: 

“This, this it is to be accursed indeed; 

For if we mortals love, or if we sing, 

We count our joys not by the things we have, 

But by what kept us from the perfect thing .” 6 

It may be worth our while to recapitulate. 
Stewardship is our use of property for God’s 
ends. Property and possessions may be diffi¬ 
cult to define, but we clearly mean with them 
the things we are free to control. Stewardship 
views this control in the light of three great 
facts: 1. Property is God’s and so it must 
honor him. 2. Property is social and intended 
for the advance of society. 3. Property is per¬ 
sonal and must help personality to come into 
its own. It is these commonplace facts Chris¬ 
tian stewards never forget. And to this 
heavenly vision they are not disobedient! 

® Collected Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Copyrighted by Dodd, 
Mead & Company, Publishers, New York City. 

104 





■ 





































“You know the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over 
them, and their great men overbear them: 
not so with you. 

“Whoever wants to be great among you must 
be your servant, and whoever wants to be first 
among you must be your slave; just as the Son of 
man has not come to be served but to serve and to 
give his life as a ransom for many.”— Jesus. 

Oh, brother men, if you have eyes at all, 
Look at a branch, a bird, a child, a rose, 

Or anything God ever made that grows— 
Nor let the smallest vision of it slip, 

Till you may read, as on Belshazzar’s wall, 
The glory of eternal partnership.” 

—Edwin Arlington Robinson . 1 


1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from Sonnet, 
Collected Poems, p. 96, by Edwin Arlington Robinson. 


106 



CHAPTER VI 
CREATIVE OWNERSHIP 

Property is a necessity. If we merely had to 
exist, the case might be different. If we only 
needed some arrangement to meet our tempo¬ 
rary wants, property problems would scarcely 
harass us. But it is more than a question of 
existence. It is a question of life. To live 
we must have freedom to realize ourselves. 
Some degree of liberty must be ours for indi¬ 
vidual action. We must be able to make 
plans; to arrange life in accordance with 
them; to choose; to have reasonable expecta¬ 
tion as to the result of the choice. For all of 
which we must have control over some things. 
These things we must be absolutely able to 
count on; no one must have the power to take 
them from us. If we could only keep what 
we are strong enough to defend, there would 
be neither liberty nor guarantee of life. Prop¬ 
erty is a means toward a full life. Stewardship 
recognizes that property is a necessity for 

every one. Necessary, that is, as a means, not 

107 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


an end of life. And it recognizes the disparity 
between the need and the social order which 
exists to supply the need. Under feudalism 
the child was born into a system in which there 
was some assured basis for a livelihood. But 
to-day “five out of every six children are born 
to no assured place in our industrial system.” 1 
Of their own, they have no means of sub¬ 
sistence. The “blessing” of poverty is often 
recited. But those of us who have experienced 
it know that this blessing all too easily becomes 
a curse. That the struggle for existence has 
its compensations no one can doubt; but when 
the struggle is hopeless, when it never finds 
fruition in fullness of life, the soul is crushed 
by the very thing that was meant to set it on 
high. No person of sense will plead for effort¬ 
less careers. But when most folks are com¬ 
pelled to put most of their energy into obtain¬ 
ing a tool, property, rather than a goal, per¬ 
sonality, grave injustice is done to life. This 
enforced, perpetual plodding at the scaffolding 
of life stewardship deplores. It has a fellow 
feeling with Jesus for those who are thus bound 
with “heavy burdens, grievous to be borne.” 

1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from Property, 
Its Duties and Rights, p. 22, Essays by Various Authors. 

108 



CREATIVE OWNERSHIP 


It shares his belief that the reign of God ought 
to be the primary interest of life. It abhors 
any system that gives an exaggerated prom¬ 
inence to property. Jesus suggested that 
such a state of affairs may do well enough 
for pagans; but in the Christian order of things 
it will never do. Property is a tool rather 
than a task; and stewardship is concerned that 
every child of God shall have this implement. 

To put this differently, we have the right to 
property. On this all men agree. Both the 
greedy and the idealists are at one concerning 
this. Even Communism does not attempt to 
abolish property. It merely attempts to reduce 
to a minimum the private use of it. The aim 
of Socialism is not the extinction of private 
property, but the extinction of private capital 
—quite a different thing, to which we shall 
later allude. This acknowledgment all along 
the line of man’s right to property is based, 
of course, on the recognition of its necessity. 
This right is not limitless. No person has the 
right to own what ought to go to others. But 
every person has the right to enough to assure 
fullness of life. When the steward knows, 
as he ought to, that a majority of the people 

in the world still go hungry for physical needs, 

109 


A 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


let alone the higher needs, while they hunger 
and thirst far too little for righteousness, he 
knows that somewhere there is meddling with 
the prerogatives of life. In the light of budget 
estimates and government statistics, eighty per 
cent of the incomes in our country are seen 
to be inadequate to keep those dependent 
upon them in the ordinary comforts of life. 
This ought to convince the most skeptical that 
property is not used in the way God intends 
it to be. The steward has this conviction by 
way of the spirit of Christ. In the name of 
the realm of God he enters his protest. 

But he does not rest with this. There are 
at least two assertions which he is bound to 
make. The first of these is that there are no 
property rights. This needs to be said out 
loud and frequently these days. As with life, 
so with a word; it is possible to denude a con¬ 
tent of all simile to intent. But even for 
shadowy meanings there is no excuse. These 
“rights” are so derivative, so relative, so con¬ 
ditional that to call them “rights” serves only 
to sustain a popular fallacy. No existent 
superstition slanders sanity more. Steward¬ 
ship has a beneficent influence on one’s vocab¬ 
ulary. One’s words get the single eye; they 

no 


CREATIVE OWNERSHIP 


wear no masks; they are shorn of double 
meanings; they do not “double cross.” For 
the steward there are no rights that do not 
root in right; and there is no right apart from 
God and humanity and us. Things are non- 
moral; things can have no rights, only persons 
can. This discrimination is inherent in steward¬ 
ship. It offends the acquisitive; they look for 
another church! But it must be made, with¬ 
out fear or favor. “That detachment of a 
man’s heart from all material wealth which 
Christ so solemnly inculcates and that love 
for one’s neighbor as oneself which he makes 
central in true religion, alike rebuke all self- 
assertive claims for the rights of property.” 1 2 
Property, like the Sabbath, was made for 
man; not man for property. 

But there is more to do than to deny property 
rights. Stewards make such negative state¬ 
ments only as correctives of thought. They 
make a positive assertion that gets to the 
bottom of things: Duties must precede rig fits. 
Men who extol property rights often mean 
ownership rights. It is because of this that 
they relish their talk of rights; although their 

1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from Properly, 
Its Duties and Rights, pp. 98, 99, Essays by Various Authors. 

Ill 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


speech sometimes suggests whistling to keep 
courage up. Blast property rights if you must; 
but how are you going to answer our claim 
to ownership? It is at this point that steward¬ 
ship sees clear and steadily. We but have the 
right to own in order to do our duty! “We 
need a new Revolution,” says Professor Edwin 
Grant Conklin. 3 “The disharmonies of society 
and the conflicts of interests and minds and 
purposes, have come largely from the exalting 
of individual rights over social obligations. We 
need a new Revolution which will enforce the 
duties of man, as our former Revolution em¬ 
phasized the rights of man. How easily the dis¬ 
harmonies of society could be silenced, and the 
conflicts between individuals and classes and 
nations could be settled, if men were taught to 
think more of their duties and less of their 
rights!” 

There can be no ownership apart from obliga¬ 
tion. Indeed, it is rather pretentious in us to 
refer to ourselves as owners. The writer was 
once accosted by a large employer whose wrath 
could not be stayed! Some young lady, fresh 
from college, had deigned to visit him. Guess 

3 The Direction of Human Evolution, p. 122. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 
publishers, New York City. 


112 



CREATIVE OWNERSHIP 


what she did! She began to assail the citadel 
of his proprietorship with the sixteen-inch 
guns of sociology. “Would you believe it?” he 
flashed at me, as fury flashed in his eyes. 
“That girl kept up an incessant chatter about 
the unearned increment.” Before this the 
unearned increment had meant nothing in his 
life. He might not have recognized it if it had 
been written all over the property where all the 
time it was! If social science can reveal that 
what we own owes its value to society rather 
than to the work of our hands, how much more 
can the religion of Christ make this clear to 
us! “Ye are not your own, for ye were bought 
with a price.” There is the investment of 
God to consider; it is his purpose we are debtor 
to. Stewardship comes to adjust our scale 
of values. With Christians, God heads the 
list, and life comes a close second; or we are 
none of his. 

So it comes that we have a right to such 
'property as we have the right to use. To gram¬ 
marians this will sound like tautology. We 
are afraid that it is, but there seems no escap¬ 
ing it. The best of thinkers have ransacked 
language to express the thought in their minds. 

Yet they have been unable to compose a 

113 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


phrase to obviate the clumsy putting to which 
we here resort. Professor Hobhouse talks of 
“property for use” and “property for power.” 
Men like Gore and Rauschenbusch have util¬ 
ized this distinction. But it leaves much to 
be desired. Talk of property for use and the 
question arises, For whose use and what, or 
for how long and much? For it is both the 
kind and the degree of use stewardship asks 
about. Talk of property for power and at 
once you remember that property is power; 
that there is constant confusion of power and 
force; that much property for power is force by 
which the many are compelled to serve the few. 
Property at its best gives us control over 
things for life, and not control over life for 
things! 

But just how are we going to draw the 
line? Here is a problem that baffles the 
brainiest. Just at what juncture self-realiza¬ 
tion becomes self-aggrandizement is difficult 
to tell. The difficulty is aggravated by the 
difference in needs in various social conditions. 
To function usefully, a biologist needs more 
property than a baker. A philosopher will 
need more books than a bookkeeper; a farmer 
more ground than a fisherman. One who 

114 


CREATIVE OWNERSHIP 


has lived in crowded quarters will have the 
profound conviction that the ownership of 
pianos should be strictly confined to those 
who were predestined to play! But how is 
one going to tell? Some things, moreover, are 
more truly ours than other things can be. 
Ideas, inventions, literary and musical pro¬ 
ductions are more nearly personal. Just where 
one’s self-expression gets into the way of 
others it is not easy to know. But to one 
fixed star we may cling. Property must serve 
personality . In other words, it must be judged 
in the light of its social effectiveness. Does 
property so preoccupy a person that he is 
thereby prevented from fulfilling the obliga¬ 
tions of parenthood? Does it make him 
inconsiderate; does it blind him to the needs 
of others; does it make him forgetful that 
every one else has the right to a full-orbed 
life? Then property is a millstone about that 
man’s soul. Does it enable him to do some 
effective piece of service; to be filial; to have 
reverence for life? Then property is a tool 
of God in w T orthy hands. Experience and 
exigency will likely always have to determine 
how much property one can privately properly 

use. But this is a criterion which sheds a flood 

115 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


of light on property to-day. It is clear that 
much- of our property now dwarfs personality. 
And it is our Christian duty to see that it is 
made to serve. 

The steward tries to approximate the actual 
to the ideal. He does not feel free to dispense 
with the grace of introspection. He takes 
this matter to heart. And he has a question 
to ask of all who have ears to hear. Or, better, 
he has two questions with which to search 
the soul: “What use have you the right to make 
of property?” “What use do you make of 
it?” Both of these questions must also be 
faced in the light of larger things. The first 
question has been discussed and further treat¬ 
ment awaits it. But the second question is 
pertinent at this juncture. It is a fashion with 
business people to talk of capital and income. 
Salaried and working people have their direct 
control limited to the latter. Suppose, then, 
we limit this question to the use one makes 
of his income. Let private stewardship practice 
engage our thought. There is a subtle danger 
in looking upon one’s income as something 
strictly private, to do with what we will. 
Self-indulgences break down personality. Ex¬ 
travagance is the expenditure of money with- 

118 


CREATIVE OWNERSHIP 


out a sense of obligation. No one can come 
to his best without volitional sacrifice. And 
the question of the selfish use of one’s income 
at once suggests the opposite use of it. Now, 
once one feels that property must further 
personality, one is bound to be drawn in 
heart to the program of the church. For here 
is an institution that, despite its many failures, 
has insistently asserted the immortal worth 
of the soul. It does not lift men from things 
but above things. It gives them God. It is 
here, and not in tithing, that the argument 
comes in for the support of the cause of Christ. 
The consciousness of God is the topmost need 
of life. The steward feels that God comes 
first in all his property. It is not a question 
of the firstfruits, the first portion; it is a ques¬ 
tion of the fruit of the Spirit, the first propor¬ 
tion. “In all things giving Him preeminence.” 
The world needs God; our money can bring 
him to men. The world needs his reign; our 
money can build up his democracy. Is one 
tenth of one’s earnings excessive to give to a 
cause like this? The outcome of our income 
must be the success of Christ’s cause. 

Let us see how far we have come. We have 

seen that social spirituality expresses itself in 

117 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


stewardship. The tithe, though it may help, 
does not suffice as a measure of our steward¬ 
ship. Trusteeship must come to expression 
in all property. Property has no rights; it 
must be rightly used. To be partners with 
God in winning the world to the life of Christ 
we must strive to bring all things into sub¬ 
jection to his will. 


118 






“A rich man’s estate bore heavy crops. So he 
debated, ‘What am I to do? I have no room to 
store my crops.’ And he said, ‘This is what I 
will do. I will pull down my granaries and build 
larger ones, where I can store all my produce and 
my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you 
have ample stores laid up for many a year; take 
your ease, eat, drink and be merry.” ’ But God 
said to him, ‘Foolish man, this very night your 
soul is wanted; and who will get all you have pre¬ 
pared?’ So fares the man who lays up treasure 
for himself instead of gaining the riches of God.” 
— Jesus. 

“Industrial work, still under bondage to Mam¬ 
mon, the rational soul of it not yet awakened, is 
a tragic spectacle. ... Yet courage:. . . Labor is not 
a devil, even while encased in Mammonism; Labor 
is ever an imprisoned god, writhing unconsciously 
or consciously, to escape out of Mammonism!. . . 
Blessed and thrice-blessed symptoms I discern of 
Master-Workers who are not vulgar men; who 
are Nobles, and begin to feel that they must act 
as such: all speed to these .”—Thomas Carlyle. 


120 


CHAPTER VII 
ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 

The acquisitive habit is the arch foe of 
stewardship. The person who is afflicted with 
acute accumulativeness has an anti-Christian 
estimate of property . In the ritual for the 
communion service God is described as One 
“whose property is always to have mercy.” 
The man who framed that phrase wrote better 
than he knew. That this is a function of prop¬ 
erty many seem unable to grasp. The truth 
needs be stretched not one whit to assert that 
man’s property is often merciless. Both the 
brother who opined that all men are liars and 
the man who averred that property is robbery 
generalized the truth out of countenance. Yet 
much that by the rule of man is legalized 
property in the light of the reign of God is 
seen to be downright robbery. The Chris¬ 
tian holds that property must serve God in 
man. Thus, when a man seeks property with¬ 
out regard to the will of God his estimate goes 

121 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


astray. He then confuses the means with 
the end. Acquisition irrespective of service is 
in many circles still deemed respectable. Men 
who hold this view are singularly blind to the 
wrongs done with property and peculiarly 
sensitive to wrongs done to property. Property 
becomes the golden calf to which they expect 
all and sundry to make obeisance. This 
species of idolatry denaturates the soul. One 
loses the ability to differentiate between the 
good and evil uses of property. One thinks 
of property as something static, “without 
variableness or shadow cast by turning/’ at 
the mention of which it is immediately incum¬ 
bent on us all to show respect. Because of the 
obstinacy of this estimate men to whose finan¬ 
cial interest it is that peace prevail in the 
industrial world unintentionally keep it in 
turmoil. This inability to discriminate in the 
realm of property was recently illustrated when 
a representative of the coal mine owners testi¬ 
fied before the Senate Committee on Education 
and Labor. Speaking about the United Mine 
Workers, whose belief in the nationalization of 
mines he confessed having in mind, he said: 
“Mr. Chairman, we just as much decline to 

talk with them... as we would decline to 

122 


ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 


sit down and talk with a robber or any other 
man who told us that when he got the power 
he intended to take our property away from us. 
There is no use of discussing with a man whose 
aim and object is to take away your property, 
when he can.” And further: “I believe we 
would be justified” (in discharging a man 
who announces his faith in the union) “because 
we know that he would be like a man coming 
into your house—if that man told you, to 
begin with, that before he got out he intended 
to rob your house, I do not care how pleasant 
he was when he came in. . . . And we keep out 
organizers of the United Mine Workers for 
exactly the same reason that those whose 
pictures are in the rogues’ gallery are kept out 
of lower New York.” Note the delinquency of 
this viewpoint! He compared men who wished 
to nationalize mines (at equitable reimburse¬ 
ment) to men who steal the treasures of one’s 
home! As if property for profit and property 
for personality were always one and the same 
thing! It does seem as if no person should 
be allowed to be an employer of labor or have 
extensive control over the tools of production 
who has not passed a satisfactory examination 

both as to character and intelligence. It is 

123 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 

# 

even more tragic when labor leaders have 
this defective view. The lack of discrimina¬ 
tion is, alas! all too prevalent among them. 
Their shortsightedness infects the multitudes 
for whom they should be eyes. There are few 
ways in which a steward can better serve his 
day than in spreading the Christian estimate 
of property and in helping to keep clear the 
distinction between property used for profit 
and property for service. 

The acquisitive habit also begets a wrong 
estimate of rights. In Christianity, love is 
right. Growth in God, filial conduct, satis¬ 
faction in service—these are the Christian 
prerogatives. These are the essential rights 
every person has. But when greed moves in 
God moves out. Then comes the conflict of 
rights! The creed of selfishness asserts that 
the right to accumulate is quite limitless. It is 
unfortunate that this has come to be known 
as the capitalistic view, for this has the impli¬ 
cation that it is confined to capitalists. Many 
a poor person has greed for his creed. And 
many a self-righteous 'member of our fortunate 
middle-class owns to this outlook on life. 
When labor-leaders leave good-sized fortunes 

the suspicion will not down that they were of 

124 


ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 

kindred mind. Many in all walks of life make 
this the basis for daily conduct. It is often 
camouflaged by toning down the words in 
which the assertion is made. You frequently 
hear men talk of “the right to the product of 
one’s labor.” But no one has this right! It 
is the philosophy of grab and get. A man 
must contribute toward life as well as get 
something out of it. But suppose a man had 
the right to all that he produced. It would 
then become a question of how much is really 
his. For materials and machinery are traceable 
to God and the work of other men; in this 
complex day production is not so simple as 
he assumes. It has been suggested that for 
mental exercise, which would not be without 
its spiritual benefits, a man should attempt 
to apportion aright the labor in the suit he 
wears. How much credit should go to the 
shepherd who tended the sheep, to the worker 
in wool, to the transportation agents who 
brought it to the mill, to the person who wove 
the cloth, to the bookkeeper or manager of 
the mill where it was woven, to the merchant 
who brought it to market, to the tailor who 
fashioned it—and this does not exhaust the 

list; or he might figure out to how much states- 

125 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


man, soldier, school-teacher, policeman, are 
severally entitled for the indirect services 
rendered to make his suit possible! Less fre¬ 
quently, in our day, the acquisitive habit is 
defended as “the right to competition.” But 
this manifestly depends upon, wb^t ^-WO; #re 
competing for; whom we are ^competing with; 
and whether all competitors have an $ven 
chance to compete. If we* strive ta e^cel» iri 
service, we accord with the will of Christ; 
but if we strive to gain by advantage over the 
weak, we have no part in him. If some men are 
“damned into the world,” as Maeterlinck por¬ 
trayed, while other m^h find their lines cast 
in pleasant places, either*by*viriue of heredity 
or environment, or because some “windfall” 
lands just where they are, the situation cannot 
appeal to our sense of fairness. This right to 
all one can get founders on other rocks. Prop¬ 
erty is of social character. Money would be 
worthless but for socie£g-\ai4l fstable govern¬ 
ment. Wealth is a cooperative achievement. 
Theft becomes honor the moment we concede 
that a person has the right to appropriate 
whatever he can lay his hands on. Steward¬ 
ship comes to smite the acquisitive claims 

hip and thigh. To it these rights are wrongs! 

126 


ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 


Men are not holders of rights, they are trustees 
for God. 

The acquisitive habit begets a wrong esti¬ 
mate of life. A man’s standards become those 
of profit instead of purpose. He thinks that 
the degree of one’s efforts depends upon the 
motive of gain. For him profit is the spur to 
work. How far afield is this from Jesus! 
Christ pictured the satisfaction of service as 
being paramount. But the adherents of acquisi¬ 
tion do not see with his eyes. They come to 
look upon business as the most important 
thing in life. Business alone is business—other 
things can await more convenient seasons. 
That the realm of God should be sought first, 
is a doctrine reserved for preachers and other 
unpractical folks. Thus they make the tool 
of life the task of life, than which there could 
be no more pathetic perversion. They exalt 
profit above function. Admiration of the 
acquisitive has made its way into our literature 
and law. Not infrequently it pervades the 
most precious of our relations; so that mar¬ 
riage becomes marketable and families are 
rent by disputes over bequests. But sadder 
than the perversion of the ends of life is the 

perversion of soul. Selfishness is spiritual 

127 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


suicide. These men fall victim to the ego- 
complex. Individualism brings them low. 
Making of one’s life all one can regardless of 
others makes one anti-social. It is only in 
relationship to others that life can be fulfilled. 
They are found fighting against themselves when 
they forget their brothers. They give their lives 
for what life can give. “What shall it profit a 
man if he gain the whole world and lose his life?” 

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey. 

Where wealth accumulates and men decay.” 

This wrong estimate results in wrong owner¬ 
ship. For now ownership, through control 
over things becomes control over life. If one 
owns the means of production, he has control 
over the lives of those who depend on his prop¬ 
erty for their livelihood. We have been born 
into an organized system of property where 
we find the many subjected to the few. Sup¬ 
pose it is too ideal to ask that property shall 
have mercy and shall thus approximate the 
character of God. But ought it not to do 
justice; to give freedom and security to life 
rather than to make for its enslavement? This 
is where ownership has gone dreadfully wrong. 

Multitudes have no adequate measure of 

128 


ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 

property for use. They have not the security 
which freedom requires. The control of their 
livelihood is in the hands of others. As for 
themselves they are merely “hands” for others. 
These others have the whip hand. The cards 
up their sleeves are hunger and fear. Control 
over labor will likely always be necessary. We 
cannot dispense with the expert, nor with 
authority. No man should advocate anarchy 
for the sake of freedom. But control over 
life, which denies men the right to work, to 
say nothing of creative work, is a blasphemy 
on brotherliness. This control over life is 
not always thus direct. It is attempted in 
realms outside of the sphere of production. 
In an attempt to protect the system on which 
profits depend, men seek to dominate pulpit, 
press, bench, and schoolroom. With the bulk 
of the wealth in the hands of a few there is 
always danger that these social agencies shall 
account themselves dependent on them. Here 
is an item to which the forward-looking person 
may well give heed. The payment of the 
tithe on the part of most church members 
could free these agencies from the possibility 
of having their freedom of thought and speech 

curbed to protect a system against which in 

129 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 

the name of Christ they should of right pro¬ 
test. This control over life leads to the assump¬ 
tion that those who own are the natural rulers 
of those who do not. Always there has been an 
economic basis for politics. One who discerns 
the signs of the times may be sure that men 
will not much longer permit their livelihood 
to be dependent upon the caprice of some 
individual. Property has no claim which is 
valid against the natural and fundamental 
right of every man to enjoy the bounty of the 
Creator. When property thus is able to con¬ 
trol the lives of men it becomes theft. For 

“ . . . you take away my life, 

When you do take the means whereby I live,” 

and this is true, even though it was Shylock 
who said it. For some men, this desire for 
control over life has more fascination than the 
control over resources. They can think of no 
greater thrill than to be able to say, like the 
army-captain who came to Jesus: “Go, and 
he goes;. . . come, and he comes;... do this, 
and he does it.” The dictatorship, and not the 
docility, carries the charm. It appeals to the 
monarch-mind. 

Stewards must note the prevalence of absentee 

130 


ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 

ownership. Here the shades of deism haunt 
us! If one has enough capital, he does not 
need to conduct his business. He can “hire 
brains,” and frequently does. This has cer¬ 
tain results the steward must cope with. For 
here owners shift from the productive to the 
financial interest in life. Thus we get passive 
property: for which a man does not work, but 
which works for him. From it people get 
income without rendering service. True, there 
are owners whose absence is enforced: dependent 
people whose lot is cast in other places and 
who have neither the ability nor opportunity 
to properly participate in the conduct of the 
business which they partly own. This wide 
and apparently inevitable distribution of stock 
among widows and dependents, employees and 
people of average means, makes the problem 
the more acute. For these all invest to get. 
They levy tax on the labors of others. Back 
in 1848 Mill said: “In no sound theory of 
private property was it ever contemplated 
that the proprietor of land should be merely 
a sinecurist quartered on it.” But here are 
property pensioners who at a distance reap the 
benefits of an industry for which they bear 

little or no responsibility. And this intensifies 

131 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


the view that regards property primarily as 
an instrument for profit. For them gain has 
scant relation to service and power scarcely 
any to responsibility. Property thus spells 
privilege and privilege is a right minus a 
function; which being interpreted means a 
wrong right! Its further sin is that it sub¬ 
ordinates creative activity to passive property. 
“To have enough to live on” becomes the 
ideal; “to have enough to live with” becomes 
an inferior state, from which no one must 
forego an opportunity to escape. Graft is 
nobler than function in a viewpoint such as 
this. One can easily guess what influence such 
a viewpoint has on youth! 

By way of this absentee ownership we en¬ 
counter the financier. He deals in the shares 
and stocks of this capital. Those who pur¬ 
chase them from him generally do so with an 
eye to dividends, and not to creative service. 
But the financier has a genius for larger things. 
Through his fertile mediation the trust has 
come to life. Now comes what one is tempted 
to call an even more intimate thing than the 
direct control of life. First was control over 
the producer; now comes control over the 

consumer. First such purchasing power as a 

132 


ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 


man managed to get was left unmolested; now 
it is invaded. Both output and prices can 
now be controlled. You buy at the figure 
fixed, or may not buy at all. It is the function 
of industry to supply us with instruments for 
the pursuit of goodness, truth, and beauty; 
now, these very instruments turn highwaymen. 
Better things, of course, can be said for the 
financier. Some deserve our praise for the 
spirit and scope of their work. As Bishop 
McConnell well says: “There is something of 
social service in the accumulation of funds to 
be used productively even though we cannot 
accurately indicate the limits of the service. 
The ability to get money together may be a 
social virtue. When we reflect upon the 
almost inevitable tendency of money to get 
away from the ordinary man we must concede at 
least a measure of justification ... in the social 
service rendered in the gathering of the funds 
and in their conservation. This, of course, is not 
intended as an exoneration of exorbitant or dis¬ 
honest returns, nor is it intended as justification 
for saddling on industry the burden of making 
profits for ‘water’ or monopoly values.” 1 But 

1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from Church 
Finance and Social Ethics, by F. J. McConnell. 

133 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


for the purpose of this chapter we need to 
note how frequently financiers further acquis¬ 
itiveness. Lynn Harold Hough says truly: 
“When a man invents an instrument which 
humanity needs, and as a result secures large 
returns, he is receiving the reward of actual 
productiveness. When a man applies his 
mind to making the largest use of existing 
instruments of value he is in effect adding 
to their number. But when a man by deft 
manipulation secures such control of the market 
or such a relation to certain stocks that he 
secures a return without rendering a corre¬ 
sponding service, he is not a producer. In a 
very ignoble sense he is a manipulator. He is 
a parasite. The world really has a harder 
lot because he is living in it and all his gains 
have an odor about them which the real pro¬ 
ducer recognizes with distaste.” The power 
wielded by these manipulators with their 
amazing “corner” on credit staggers imaginings. 
Can this stupendous power rightly stay in the 
hands of these men? Will it ever be possible 
for Wall Street to be the street called Straight? 

Proprietorship in absentia requires for its 
existence the employment of management. 

Management in itself is of splendid usefulness. 

134 


ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 


It is functional, directive, constructive. But 
management under this system becomes a 
different thing. The financial interests put 
management in the saddle, but do not permit 
it to hold the reins! Managerial success is 
measured not by the degree of service into 
which it guides production and steers industry, 
but by the proportion of profits at which the 
goods are produced. Whether they “sell it 
dear” or whether, like some corporations, they 
have been able by the clubbing of their re¬ 
sources to produce a commodity cheaper and 
better than if it were manufactured outside 
of the combine, the criterion for most managers 
remains to “make it cheap,” so far as labor 
is concerned. This makes for exploitation first 
of those who labor and next of those who buy. 
When managers are obligated to provide prof¬ 
its, not service, for their seen and unseen em¬ 
ployers, they are sure to become heartless and 
dull to the sense of right. 

Thought needs also to be given to the owner¬ 
ship of capital: the tools of production or the 
means of exchange; land, realty, machinery, 
money. Capitalism is the private control of 
this capital (private may mean one person or 

one class). Stewardship remembers that cap- 

135 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


ital is a thing—a thing for a task. It should 
be at the service of life, life should not be at 
the service of it. Capital should help industry 
to help men. “Those who own it should no 
more control production than a man who lets 
a house controls the meals which shall be cooked 
in the kitchen, or the man who lets a boat 
the speed at which the rowers shall pull.” 2 
“A society is rich when material goods, including 
capital, are cheap and human beings dear. In¬ 
deed, the word ‘riches’ has no other meaning.” 3 

And thus we see how ownership comes to be 
divorced from service. This economic egotism 
breaks down all moral boundaries. It is for¬ 
getful of function. It does not come under 
the tongue of true Christian report. That 
“the greatest is he who serves” is alien lan¬ 
guage to it. But whatever it forgets, the stew¬ 
ard must remember what property is for: 
to let men live at their best. And if it does 
not do that, “there is no morning for it.” 

The acquisitive habit results not only in 
wrong valuations and in wrong ownership, 
but it results in wrong men. It is in respect 
to people that Christians are sensitive. If 

2 The Acquisitive Society, R. H. Tawney. Harcourt, Brace & Co., 
publishers, New York City. 

* Ibid. 


136 



ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 


conditions are created in which the many are 
made subject to the few; if the many have to 
go through life with vitality misapplied, hopes 
lowered, efforts thwarted, while the minority 
make their money at the expense of the finer 
life, conditions must be altered. The steward 
may not as yet see clearly how this can be 
done; but to see that it ought to be done is itself 
great gain. For one thing, it makes the masses 
less than God intends them to be. Christ 
held that life is sacred, because of its potential 
possibilities in God. He held that life must 
be serviceable and not self-centered; that its 
fulfillment lies in good will rather than gain. 

In the acquisitive order men are inconsiderate. 
There is an anti-Christian basis of esteem. 
See in what tragic fashion God’s children 
regard themselves! Say what we will, the 
basis of esteem, in the non-Christian world, 
which is by far the largest, is how much money 
one has, not how much good one does. (Who 
shall arise to say that the ministry is alto¬ 
gether exempt from a standard like this?) 
Men are judged by acquisitions rather than by 
function. Not even the most money-mad are 
content with money. They want the esteem 

of others, if only as “self-made” men! People 

137 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


care to be respected as persons, not as pocket- 
books. But if money is the basis upon which 
we honor men, what honor have those who 
serve in lowly but useful work, where regard 
is scanty? The really tragic consequence of 
all this is the tendency to degrade labor. For 
laboring men must have self-esteem and must 
be esteemed. The writer attended once a 
meeting of employers called to discuss a strike. 
He was struck with the constant talk of “cap¬ 
ital and labor.” The order of the words was 
not once reversed. It seemed to him like an 
impressive summary of their total attitude, 
which prized profits above personalities. Men 
go wrong when esteem for themselves or 
their fellows goes. 

The acquisitive order tends to make men 
unhappy because they are not safe. They do 
not know what day the wolf will gnaw at the 
door. They have their loved dependents, for 
whom they would give their lives. Yet they 
are unable to supply them with necessities. 
This makes for a grim and desperate mood; 
they cannot enter into joy. If the masses are 
sullen, let us remember why. What graver 
indictment could there be of our civilization 

than that the mass of men live without secur- 

138 


ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 


ity, and feverishly grasp all they can get to 
insure the future of those they love and them¬ 
selves? This too compels a reaching after 
money that serves to distort life. Property 
is the one thing that can keep them from the 
poorhouse. And so an additional halo is 
thrown about property and life once again 
becomes an inordinate search for gold. 

The acquisitive order makes for discontent. 
Men have no love for their work. First, because 
they have no right to it; they hold it by grace 
of another. Second, because they are working, 
not for creative expression, but to pile up 
profits for those who already have much. 
Third, because they have no say in their 
industry; sometimes even their collective ex¬ 
pression is taken no notice of. Fourth, be¬ 
cause they are working under a sense of im¬ 
minent personal want. Fifth, because their 
labor is sometimes unproductive and some¬ 
times misproductive. There is something damn¬ 
ing to men when they have to make shoes 
out of paper or when they have to manu¬ 
facture habit-forming drugs. Sixth, because so 
many get no chance for initiative; they have 
the same things to do each day and they get 

to do them by rote; men become machines. 

139 


/ 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


Seventh, because the acquisitive cult shows no 
fitting appreciation for the work that is done. 
At the risk of repetition, note that at its own 
scale of values the acquisitive order lacks the 
sense of equity. A woman immodest enough 
to go in for burlesque movies can earn more 
in one month than Jane Addams could get in a 
year. An adroit manipulator of finance can 
gather more out of one “corner” than the 
most eminent educator can earn in all his life. 
Eighth, men hate to work in a system they 
do not trust. It outrages their sense of justice 
that those who do less get more in our social 
order. Ninth, because the personal contact 
of employer and employee has so largely dis¬ 
appeared. In the olden days when the “boss” 
was frequently in the homes of those who 
worked for him, there was a genuine chance 
for them to understand each other’s moods 
and needs. But now, with miles, managers, 
financiers and foremen intervening, misunder¬ 
standing is easy and hatred runs rife. 

The acquisitive order thus makes men unsym¬ 
pathetic. Our social problems can never be 
solved by mere sociology. The human element 
—the psychological aspects—lies at the root 

of them. It is upon them that their solution 

140 


ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 


depends. Jesus stressed the need for the 
single eye. It is our only hope! But now 
men’s outlook is divided and divisive. Men 
crushed by greed see red. Men ruled by 
greed see yellow. Men on whose eyes there 
has never been the touch of Jesus Christ see 
others only as things to be used, not as souls 
to be made. A laboring man whose family 
exists on the borders of starvation will see the 
employer only as an archenemy, to be hated 
and despised. On the other hand, when a 
man “wears several men’s clothes, eats several 
men’s dinners, occupies several families’ 
houses,” 4 something dies out in his heart. 
Simplicity and sympathy are banished; con¬ 
siderateness departs. A man who seeks only 
gain destroys those moral restraints that con¬ 
dition its pursuit. He surfeits his soul. 

But perhaps the outstanding crime which 
the acquisitive habit perpetrates upon men is 
that it divides them on an arbitrary basis. 
There is an insane difference between business 
and 'professional life. The fallacy of this 
division receives tremendous statement in R. H. 
Tawney’s book, The Acquisitive Society. There 

4 The Acquisitive Society, R. H. Tawney. Harcourt, Brace & Co., pub¬ 
lishers, New York City. 


141 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


are, to be sure, many professional men of 
violent acquisitiveness. But when you enter 
a profession you are expected to live for the 
service you can render rather than the gains 
you can get. Enter into business, and success 
is now measured by the expansion of your 
property, by the way you “make it pay.” 
But industry is legitimate; it should minister 
to men’s needs; it need not blush for shame. 
When business becomes a profession in the 
fine sense of the word and the basis of success 
the performance of the function which is ours, 
the social order shall have subscribed to Chris¬ 
tian stewardship. The important work is not 
getting; it is giving your very best. Where 
work is measured by profits, there is antichrist. 

Lastly, the acquisitive habit leaves the world 
wrong. It does not strive to ameliorate con¬ 
ditions. It makes no attempt to restore the 
contact between the individual and the re¬ 
sources for his existence; it does not attempt 
to let property serve personality. On the 
contrary, it multiplies luxuries, so that pro¬ 
duction is misdirected. With more profit in 
luxuries than in necessities, futilities abound 
while there arises a shortage of the needful 

things. Profiting makes profiteers; life is the 

142 


ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 

background against which these men daub the 
image of the lewd god Mammon. Amusements 
are commercialized; our most vulnerable pas¬ 
sions are preyed upon for gain. Law is com¬ 
mandeered for greed, while unemployment 
stalks abroad, seeking whom it may devour. 
And the Realm of heaven, the democracy of 
Jesus, the kingdom of God—call it what you 
will—if permitted a hearing, is patronized as a 
dream! This is the tragedy! Against it, stew¬ 
ardship hurls all the weight of its influence. 
It is not for want of proffered panaceas that 
things remain as they are. Always there are 
those who are out for revolution by force. 
Always there are those hurried folks who have 
an idea that things can be changed overnight. 
How constantly men forget that 

‘‘The social states of human kinds 
Are made by multitudes of minds. 

And after multitudes of years 
A little human growth appears 
Worth having, even to the soul 
Who sees most plain it’s not the whole .” 5 

This does not mean that we must expect 
things to move as slowly as they have been 

5 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from Collected 
Poems, by John Masefield. 


143 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


moving. There is every reason to believe that 
social progress ought to be accelerated now. 
But it is with the Christian steward that the 
solution lies . He holds the key to the door 
of the temple of brotherhood. What if his 
meekness is often mistaken for weakness? 
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit 
the earth.” What did Jesus mean? Suppose 
he meant what he said, that in the kingdom 
of heaven those filled with the spirit of the 
Kingdom would be the masters of the resources 
of the earth. Obviously, in this respect the 
Kingdom has not yet come. Fancy grouping 
together the owners of the earth in some 
vast assembly—the possessors of the great 
landed properties, the holders of the mines, 
the controllers of the oil-wells, the masters of 
the railroad and steamship lines, and then 
flaunt over them a banner inscribed, “Blessed 
are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” 
The most charitable interpretation of such an 
inscription would be that we had got our labels 
mixed. And yet that one contradiction stands 
stubbornly in the path of the spread of scrip¬ 
tural Christianity throughout the earth. 6 The 
steward sees how wrong things are and how 

6 Bishop McConnell, previous quotation. 

144 



ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 


right they ought to be. He will not rest con¬ 
tent until the reign of God triumphs in the 
earth, until the social order is fully Christian¬ 
ized. He therefore leagues himself, to utilize 
Wesley’s phrase, “offensively and defensively” 
w T ith every good agency that seeks the better 
day. But he does more! 

He soberly tries to discover how far he can 
right these wrongs. If he is an owner, he will 
resort to some such Christian experiments in 
industry as now are being tried. Hampered 
though he may be by markets and competi¬ 
tion and by publicity, he will show his respect 
for life in his business activities; with him 
service will supplant gain. As an investor he 
will try to avoid shady earnings and endeavor 
to put his money where it will do most good 
—to humanity. If it falls to his lot to have 
superintendence over men, he will remember, 
despite their defects, how potential their spirits 
are. He w T ill not mock the meaning of Christ 
by piously inviting his workers to “Come to 
Jesus,” when it is evident that he has himself 
shut the door of his business in the face of 
Christ! If he is an employee, he will remember 
that service is ever superior to gain; that 

returning good for evil, even in industry, is 

145 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


the Christian mode of life, that even when he 
does not make much he can be much. And 
he will not mistake silence for spirituality when 
injustice shows its head! 

Stewards prize property for personal use and 
unalterably oppose it for selfish power. The 
average member of the Christian Church has 
a desire to do right. Men do not belong to 
voluntary organizations that make such de¬ 
mands upon them as does the church to-day 
unless they have developed to a considerable 
degree the spirit of their Lord. The church 
is shy on Shylocks, and it is shy of them! 
Stewardship asks of church folks that they 
shall look out on the world through the eyes 
of Jesus Christ. If they consent to do this, 
stewards are confident that they will render 
one verdict and only one: Personality must have 
precedence over property; God and not goods 
is man’s goal; greed must go for good. 

There are many hopeful signs of this steward¬ 
ship both among employers and laborers. We 
all know some who own, as well as some who 
labor, who sincerely strive to secure a Chris¬ 
tian state of affairs. They struggle against 
great odds to express in business life their 

faith in the reign of God. They are pioneer 

146 


ACQUISITIVE OWNERSHIP 


souls and heroes. It is easy for us who have 
little to condemn those who have much. It 
is a far more difficult thing for men who are 
favored in life to take upon themselves the 
form of a servant; to account it ample honor 
to be trustees for God. It is a happy augury 
that many are seeking the light. The writer 
thinks now of a business man who during the 
lengthy illness that terminated his life was 
concerned with this very question of letting 
his business bespeak the spirit of his Lord. 
Doubtless many pastors know such noblemen, 
and the cheering truth is that their number is 
on the increase. 

To recapitulate: Wrong valuations exist 
because of the acquisitive habit: wrong esti¬ 
mates of property, rights, and life. We have 
to contend with wrong ownership, by which 
control over life becomes insidious. Absentee 
ownership, financial manipulation, hampered 
management, capitalistic claims, result in 
wronging life. In a state of things like this 
men become inconsiderate, unhappy, discon¬ 
tented, unsympathetic, divided against them¬ 
selves. Meanwhile the world is left wrong 
and the Christian social order does not get a 

chance. Stewards preach with their practice, 

147 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


and thus unmistakably reassert the prophetic 
word: 


“For though the giant ages heave the hill 
And break the shore, and evermore 
Make and break, and work their will; 

Though world on world in myriad myriads roll 
Round us, each with different powers, 

And other forms of life than ours. 

What know we greater than the soul? 

On God and Godlike men we build our trust.” 


148 






“Now, everyone who listens to these words of 
mine and acts upon them will be like a sensible 
man who built his house on rock. The rain came 
down, the floods rose, the winds blew and beat 
upon that house, but it did not fall, for it was 
founded on rock. And everyone who listens to these 
words of mine and does not act upon them will 
be like a stupid man who built his house on sand. 
The rain came down, the floods rose, the winds 
blew and beat upon that house, and down it fell 
—with a mighty crash.”— Jesus. 

/“There walks Judas, he who sold 
Yesterday his Lord for gold, 

Sold God’s presence in his heart 
For a proud step in the mart; 

He hath dealt in flesh and blood— 

At the bank his name is good, 

At the bank, and only there, 

’Tis a marketable ware.” 

—James Russell Lowell. 

“For we throw our acclamations of self-thanking, 
self-admiring, 

With, at every mile run faster, ‘Oh the wondrous, 
wondrous age!’ 

Little thinking if we work our souls as nobly as 
our iron, 

Or if angels will commend us at the goal of pil¬ 
grimage.” 

—Elizabeth Barrett Browninq. 

150 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE WIDER STEWARDSHIP 

Trusteeship for God goes beyond business 
life. There are other realms in which it comes 
to expression. Property has wide ramifica¬ 
tions. The pursuit of profit may be traced in 
every place; the attempt to protect the system 
that makes it possible may be seen on every 
hand. No discussion of stewardship would be 
worthy of the name without some intimations 
of these larger avenues where its influence must 
be felt. There has never been a time since 
Jesus walked the earth that lofty spirits have 
not practiced stewardship. In two well-known 
instances American Christians have rendered a 
good account of their stewardship. The slave 
traffic w’as the greatest perversion of per¬ 
sonality known to history. Yet, come to 
think of it, it was merely the acquisitive in¬ 
stinct carried out to its logical end. It was 
not easy sailing for the abolitionists. Neither 
church nor state spoke in unison and the press 

was divided. But of their final triumph we 

151 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


all are witnesses. The organized liquor traffic 
had firmly intrenched itself in business, politics, 
finance. But, thanks to devoted women and 
earnest men, the Christian Church was aroused 
to its sense of stewardship. It will not be many 
years now before, over all the earth, men will 
celebrate the funeral of John Barleycorn. This 
sense of responsibility for the welfare of the 
race will have telling effects elsewhere; and in 
the realm of property we may count on steward¬ 
ship to see the right thing done. For a belief, 
given time enough , will express itself in an act. 
Folks who clamor that stewardship shall always 
be able to say, “Lo here, and Lo there,” put 
the cart before the horse. Yet whenever possi¬ 
ble stewardship will register itself in definite 
results. Let us think now of some realms 
where trusteeship may count. 

Consider war. For property has much to 
do with war. To be sure, it is not the only 
cause of war. Racial antagonisms, religious 
differences, rival governments, all have their 
influence. But that property figures prom¬ 
inently so great and fair-minded a man as 
James Bryce attests: “There is still. . . the 
lust for territory, . . . the desire for a state 

to acquire, either for itself as a state or for 

152 


THE WIDER STEWARDSHIP 


groups of its citizens, natural sources of wealth 
valuable for the purpose of producing wealth.” 
Besides, “commercial or financial interests 
create ill feeling and distrust.” Viscount 
Bryce calls our attention to the fact that “a 
remarkable illustration of the greed shown by 
capitalistic groups in different countries to 
appropriate natural resources has recently 
appeared in the case of the mineral oils,” 
and speaking of radium, the rarest and most 
precious of metals, he says, “No one can guess 
what would be the fate of any weak com¬ 
munity in which it might be discovered in 
abundance .” 1 But there is nothing inherently 
divisive in property as such; indeed, inter¬ 
national trade could well be a powerful guaran¬ 
tee of peace. Now, a steward has the right 
to be concerned about this thing. For he judges 
by human values; and a war which took a 
toll of millions of lives and a greater toll in 
spiritual values, is an object lesson burned 
into his memory. He will swear eternal enmity 
to disruptive jingoism. Enough evidence is in 
now from the missionary fields to show that 
under the ministry of missionaries property can 

1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from Inter - 
national Relations, by James Bryce. 

153 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


create good will. But commerce too must get 
the spirit of considerateness. It too must 
attempt to show forth the spirit of the Lord. 
If Christianity is not applicable in international 
relations, we stand in imminent need of some 
superior faith! The Christian citizen must 
prevail upon his statesmen to work righteously 
in the earth, and to turn a deaf ear to “interests” 
that conflict with the best interest of the 
human race. For war, in addition to its human 
tragedy, puts upon nations crushing burdens 
of debt and taxation. One’s mind reels to 
read the statistics of national debt of France, 
Great Britain, and the United States. Less 
than $11,000,000,000 in 1913 and over $110,- 
315,000,000 in 1920, to say nothing of the 
upkeep of armaments, which, thanks to the 
stewardship of some Christian men and the 
Washington Conference, has at least for a time 
been cut down. If we do nothing about it, 
“how shall our traitor lives be guarded from 
the loathing of our souls?” What can we do 
about it? Individually, we need the patience 
to study the facts and to give them circula¬ 
tion. Church people will find such informa¬ 
tion now available through the Church Peace 

Union and The Federal Council of Churches 

154 


THE WIDER STEWARDSHIP 


of Christ in America. We can encourage our 
denominational leaders to cooperate with such 
a superb agency as the Commission on Inter¬ 
national Justice and Goodwill of the Federal 
Council. Above all the Christian steward can 
exert his influence against all that inferior 
patriotism that is based on the self-seeking 
motive, and exemplify that pure type to which 
we like to believe that our fathers pledged 
“our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” 
Shall we disappoint their hopes and disparage 
God’s reign on earth? 

Closely allied to this is the matter of 'politics. 
Surely, here is dire need for an invasion by 
stewardship. Mr. Bryce told the Institute of 
Politics that in every country he had been 
citizens who were zealous for the good name 
of their country came to say to him, “Don’t 
judge us by our politicians,” and expressed his 
conviction that “human nature does not wear 
its most engaging aspect in public life.” This, 
by the way, is all the more reason for Chris¬ 
tians to enter political life; they could bring 
with them a change of atmosphere, in which 
there might be a chance for the healing of 
the nations. Property is basic to politics. 

“Property, in its various forms and distribu- 

155 


l 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


tion, and the social groups which arise out of 
the economic processes,” form “the funda¬ 
mental materials for the science of govern¬ 
ment .” 2 For a long time things were worse 
than they are. Both representation and 
franchise were based upon property, and men 
were not given the vote simply because they 
were what Carlyle called “unfeathered bipeds.” 
Political privileges were predicated upon eco¬ 
nomic advantages. But a change for the 
better came. In France Rousseau began to 
deny the doctrine that “the transmission, 
alienation, accumulation, and distribution of 
wealth bore a fundamental relation to the form 
and practices of the government,” and, with 
certain qualifications, exalted “the general 
will .” 3 This exaltation of man as man, which 
the Puritans did much to sustain, came to its 
zenith in the Declaration of Independence 
which asserts that “all men are born free and 
equal” and “governments derive their just 
powers from the consent of the governed.” 
But do they? Or do the economic groups 
still determine political action: “Does any one 
think t hat a thousand farmers or laborers, 

* The Economic Basis oj Politics, Charles A. Beard. Alfred A. Knopf, 
publisher. New York City. 

8 Opposite quotation. 


156 



THE WIDER STEWARDSHIP 


going on about their tasks * have the same 
influence in the formation of a protective tariff 
bill as a thousand manufacturers represented 
by spokesmen in the lobbies and committee 
rooms of the Congress of the United States?” 
Thus our theory of government respects per¬ 
sons, while our practice respects 'property. 
Here, then, is a fruitful field for stewardship. 
It is no simple matter to make property sub¬ 
servient to people in politics. Here the voice 
and vote of the Christian may be abroad in 
the land. He can, as a citizen, demand those 
measures that respect personality and com¬ 
mend the politicians who hold human rights 
primary. One may instance, as a concrete 
example, the fact that we find ourselves yet 
in a sad plight as regards child-labor law. 
While it may be true, as Miss Royden thinks, 
that we in America have a pathetic faith in 
legislation, we are sure that our laws must 
reflect Christian stewardship. 

Stewardship must also impress the press. 
“Newspapers and magazines,” to quote James 
Bryce again, “exist not for the sake of dis¬ 
seminating true facts and inculcating sound 
opinions, but primarily for making money by 


4 Italics mine. 


157 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


maintaining and increasing the circulation of 
the journal, because the more circulation the 
larger will be the receipts to be expected 
from advertisements. . . . There are countries in 
which money exercises great power, buying up 
journals, and suborning them to pervert facts 
and to sell their advocacy of opinion.” Even 
though “some have an honest wish not only 
to describe facts correctly but to inculcate 
views they think sound, not many resist the 
temptation to say what will please their read¬ 
ers .” 5 That the press often tries to capture 
public opinion for some acquisitive point of 
view is all too evident. We need not only 
religious journalism but journalism that is 
religious. At present, though some church 
papers are still compromised in their adherence 
to literalism and individualism, one can find 
splendid examples of trusteeship in the religious 
press. There is yet much work to be done. 
Here too the service motive must become 
paramount. It will take courage to go in the 
teeth of profits. Edward Bok and the Curtis 
Publishing Company led the way years ago in 
refusing to carry advertisements for unsavory 
products. Who can doubt that the spirit of 


‘ Previous quotation. 


158 



THE WIDER STEWARDSHIP 


Jesus will beget great editors who will refuse 
to lend their talents except for the advocacy 
of the reign of God on earth? The press must 
be won to Christ. It must be able to say, 
not as a theological proposal, but as evidence 
of common sense, “These things are written 
that ye may believe Jesus, and have life in 
his name.” Literature can serve two masters 
and does. It must serve but One. Into the 
freedom of the press and the freedom of speech 
space does not permit us to go. It goes with¬ 
out saying that stewards cannot but believe 
in fair play. They are committed to the 
Golden Rule. They follow One, who, being 
wise, still always asked those who were far 
his inferior, “How think ye?” Gamaliel was 
for giving the apostles a fair hearing when the 
whole Sanhedrin was for throttling them. 
This is worthy of emulation. 

Stewardship must be exercised in the realm 
of education. Here also one is privileged to 
partnership with God. The steward realizes 
the ruin wrought by ignorance. The examina¬ 
tions in connection with the selective draft 
during the war revealed an average intelligence 
of thirteen. If this is the average here, with 

our cultural facilities, what is it throughout 

159 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


the world? What is it in China with the ratio 
of literacy one in twenty-three? Some organs 
of “public opinion” limit their endeavors to 
the mind of the ten-year-old! A babel of 
tongues is child’s play compared to a babel 
of thought. Clear ideas do not grow in mud¬ 
dled minds; suspicion and superstition are the 
weeds that flourish there. Many succumb to 
the temptation to exploit this ignorance. Quack 
medicines have their chance where hygiene is 
unknown. Quack literature thrives where 
minds are uncritical; and quack religions have 
their innings with multitudes whose intelligence 
is subnormal. Not only will the steward 
realize the need of education for its benefit 
to life and its safeguard against exploitation, 
but he will wish to make sure that it is in 
control of those who have the Christian view 
of life. He will be on guard against the attempts 
of any church, out of lust for power, to seek 
to dominate the educational field, and to change 
history into propaganda, hierarchal or other¬ 
wise. At the same time he will remember 
that the sure cure for an hysterical view of 
religion is an historical view of it. He will 
vote to put the educational institutions in the 

hands of honest men, lovers of truth, who 

160 


THE WIDER STEWARDSHIP 


esteem the service motive preeminent in life. 
He will be instant in season and out to seek 
to promote religious education, which will 
adorn intellectuality with the grace of intelli¬ 
gence and will beget the conviction in young 
lives that God matters most. He will recognize 
that teachableness is a Christian achievement 
and so attach himself to those agencies where 
he can be informed for the sake of the reign 
of God. 

Stewardship cannot evade the matter of 
amusements. Their commercialization is a 
matter of deep concern to all believers in the 
supremacy of the spiritual. We cannot sub¬ 
mit for one moment to the commercialized 
interests which prey for gain upon every im¬ 
pulse that human life holds dear. The money 
element has come to dominate the amusement 
situation. “Back of the professional stands the 
commercial promoter, and the promoter takes 
his cue from the cash box every time.” He is 
not seeking chiefly the social welfare. Walter 
Rauschenbusch has well stated the influence of 
commercial control: “Pleasure resorts run for 
profits are always edging along toward the 
forbidden. Men spend most freely when under 

liquor or sex excitement; therefore the pleasure 

161 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


resorts supply them with both. Where profit 
is eliminated, the quieter and higher pleasures 
get their chance.” These lepers of greed have 
no hesitancy in utilizing the one day distinctly 
dedicated to the spiritual for the sake of 
exploiting the people of the land. Though 
the Lord’s Day may admit of a more liberal 
interpretation than obtains in some quarters, 
the steward will prefer the puritanical to the 
Satanical any day! These men dethrone for 
profit the day enthroned for character. The 
steward must sturdily stand sentinel against 
the encroachments of those who worship the 
golden calf and follow after Epicurean gods. 
He may also well be concerned about the 
scourge of “spectatoritus”—that popular Amer¬ 
ican pastime of being onlookers rather than 
participants in play. Stewards will do what 
they can to further those amusements that 
re-create character. By example and patron¬ 
age they will give support to those amusements 
from which the profit motive is effaced. The 
steward accepts his citizenship as trusteeship 
for God. 

For the steward the consciousness of God 
means a concern for humanity. Benjamin 

Franklin was impressed with his responsibility 

162 


THE WIDER STEWARDSHIP 


to God. He was awed by the thought; to-day 
we are cheered by it. Responsibility alludes to 
the ability to respond. The followers of Christ 
have had this and have it still. If the prac¬ 
tical results for stewardship in a single life 
may seem small, regard the collective achieve¬ 
ments of organized Christianity. There is 
something about these achievements that sets 
one’s heart athrill and makes one devoutly 
thankful to be a member of the church. The 
church has often been derelict, and to-day 
often hampers itself by narrow individualism 
on the one hand and bureaucracv on the other. 
But still its achievements are momentous and 
are but an earnest of the things that are to 
come. Fighting against the odds which num¬ 
berless ages of savage inheritance place against 
them, they have given point to the prophet’s 
exclamation: “The people that know God . . . 
shall do exploits.” They have made more 
headway in the direction of the stupendous 
social changes than the followers of all other 
religious leaders. They have cast out the 
demon of slavery; they have slain autocracy; 
disease withers in their tread and ignorance 
takes to flight; they have cast out exploita¬ 
tion, and democracy is at dawn; they have 

163 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


smitten the liquor traffic until it writhes in its 
death throes; they have taken the world for 
their parish and set the child in its midst; 
they are fighting a good fight with greed, with 
several rounds yet to go; they have declared 
war on war; they have banished superstitions 
and led peoples into light; to the narrowness 
that is within them they are themselves taking 
the sword! Yet Mr. Wells imagines the church 
in doubt as to what Christ meant when he 
said: “I came to bring a sword!” They are 
busy now with personality. “All nations he 
has created from a common origin, to dwell 
all over the earth,” said the international Paul 
of his international God. The moment one 
believes in the preeminence of personality one 
believes in the essential solidarity of the race. 
They are therefore at the Herculean task of 
purging themselves from race-prejudice, from 
the acquisitive motive, from the habit of 
greed. This is as big a piece of work as a 
man can set himself to. Indeed, it is too big; 
he can only do it through God! In his spirit 
the followers of Jesus are trying to acclimate 
their thought to a race consciousness and are 
learning that patriotism must be a stepping 

stone to higher things. They are striving to 

164 


THE WIDER STEWARDSHIP 


elevate others to a similar outlook on life. 
Finally, they are adjusting their lives to work 
humanity good. They follow Christ with 
sustained, social spirituality. They dedicate 
their lives in devotion to God and man. During 
the life time of Jesus only a handful traveled 
the glowing pathway from concession to him 
to confession of him. Since then the stream 
has widened to a river, the river broadened 
to a flood, and the flood is becoming an ocean 
of those who are not content to lie inert in 
the cradle of some creed, to bask in the com¬ 
forts of some self-ordered social order, to 
disport themselves while the world needs life, 
but who take sides with Jesus Christ in his 
avowed endeavor to lift humanity to the heart 
of God. For this cause the steward seeks to 
sanctify every trail of property. 


165 


“The Lord said, ‘Well, where is the trusty, 
thoughtful steward whom the lord and master 
will set over his establishment to give out supplies 
at the proper time? Blessed is that servant if his 
lord and master finds him so doing when he arrives! 
I tell you plainly, he will set him over all his prop¬ 
erty. But if that servant says to himself, “My 
lord and master is long of arriving,” and if he starts 
to beat the menservants and maidservants, to eat 
and drink, and get drunk, that servant’s lord and 
master will arrive on a day when he does not expect 
him and at an hour which he does not know; he 
will cut him in two and assign him the fate of un¬ 
believers. . . .* 

He who has much given him 

will have much required from him, 
and he who has much entrusted to him 
will have all the more demanded of him.” 

— Jesus. 

“Above the maddening cry for blood, 

' Above the wild war-drumming, 

Let Freedom’s voice be heard, with good 
The evil overcoming. 

Give prayer and purse 
To stay the Curse 
Whose wrong we share, 

Whose shame we bear, 

Whose end shall gladden Heaven!” 

—John Greenleaf Whittier. 


166 


CHAPTER IX 


THE STEWARDSHIP OF THE 
CHURCH 1 

“You see,” said Pope Innocent to Saint 
Thomas Aquinas, as they watched the priests 
carrying loads of gold into the Vatican, “you 
see, the day is gone when the church could 
say, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’ ” “Yes, 
holy father,” replied the saint, “and the day 
is also gone when she could say to the cripple, 
‘Arise and walk/ ” But the Protestant Church 
at present is not able to boast of its wealth. 
To be sure, it has large resources, but they are 
by no means commensurate with the task it 
has to do. What is wealth to an individual 
would be poverty for a nation, and a phenom¬ 
enal sum to a person would be but a beggarly 
allowance for institutional Christianity. The 
church is prevented from bidding cripples walk 
by financial limitations. Its resources are by 

1 The impetus for the writing of this chapter came from the reading of 
Bishop McConnell’s book, Church Finance and Social Ethics. The author 
is glad for this opportunity to acknowledge the inspiration received from 
the bishop’s writings. 


167 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


no means consonant with the work it has to 
do. Indeed, to put it thus tamely seems well- 
nigh sacrilege. The world is in desperate need 
of the good news of God and of the realm whose 
Master Jesus is. If, in the face of a need like 
this, your heart does not command your bank 
account, you had best go to your knees! For 
if the pocketbook does not first seek the King¬ 
dom, it is antichrist. The evangelization of 
the world is delayed because the Christian 
people have withheld from the church the 
means with which to reach mankind. The 
church can hasten Christ’s reign in proportion 
as the funds are forthcoming. 

But it behooves the church itself to practice 
stewardship. What it asks of individuals it 
must do collectively. Of course it will have 
to function, at least to a large extent, through 
its ministers or its agents. It ill becomes 
theological schools to keep silent on finance. 
That some theological students do not know 
how to write a check properly was the state¬ 
ment of the registrar of a prominent theolog¬ 
ical school. It may not sound as poetical as 
the aesthetic sense of some brethren demands, 
but it is none the less a fact that there is a 

business side to the ministry. Let us have 

168 


STEWARDSHIP OF THE CHURCH 

done with the sorrow of this situation. It is 
entirely fitting that we should bemoan it. A 
minister ought to be engaged in spiritual pur¬ 
suits, and the material side should be looked 
after by others. But this ideal state seldom 
exists. The affairs of the average church 
ruthlessly tear us away from unperturbed 
communion with books and homiletics, and, 
what is more serious still, from spiritual service. 
By the exigencies of the case a minister is 
forced to be not merely a preacher or pastor 
but manager as well. These are the heartless 
facts, however we wish the ideal. We have to 
make the best of an unpleasant but serious 
predicament which is not in the least mitigated 
by the boards “overhead.” To refuse to do 
the work and persistently proclaim that our 
hands are unsoiled of mammon is one sure 
way of not realizing the ideal. The rather, 
we must make for ourselves and our cause 
friends by means of the mammon of unright¬ 
eousness. Nor is the situation utterly hopeless. 
A minister may through his business contacts 
preach the gospel of the Kingdom. Finance 
is not necessarily a deterrent of spirituality. 
It is not true that our ministry must needs 

be less spiritual because money matters are 

169 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


part of it. The real objection, of course, is 
that one is thus compelled to devote so much 
time and energy to material details, whereas 
the ordinary field is laden with opportunities 
far beyond one’s strength. Raising money to 
raise manhood is a task worth while, even if 
a preacher has to do it. Financial work need 
not mar our ministry even if it does bar our 
ministry from certain lines of work. Not 
the quality of his work, but the quantity may 
be affected. And if for no other reason, the 
minister should know finance because this is 
the thing his people are so busy with. But 
woe betide that minister who indulges in sharp 
practices in his business for the church, or 
who fails to manifest a sensitive social con¬ 
science concerning its affairs. 

The officials of local churches should prac¬ 
tice stewardship. Mr. Ford is credited with 
the observation that the church is clearly a 
divine institution, since any other institution 
run in so slipshod a way would have gone under 
long ago! In ministerial circles one often 
hears the complaint that business men do not 
show their business acumen in the work of 
the church. The resources of the church must 

be used to the uttermost for the welfare of the 

170 


STEWARDSHIP OF THE CHURCH 


work. Of late college trustees have awakened 
out of their complacency and opened their 
properties for summer schools and similar 
gatherings. Among some church officials the 
notion prevails that the church building is 
the private property of an elect membership. 
A sense of stewardship will mean that the 
resources of property as well as of finance will 
be utilized to the utmost. Who has not known 
official members who thought more of saving 
windows and chairs than of saving boys? 

The church at large must keep the service 
motive evident in its ownership. It must even 
subordinate devotion to a denomination to 
the spirit of service. In this respect, at least, 
business can teach the church. It is forever 
on the alert for the elimination of excess ma¬ 
chinery. And it never hesitates to invest 
where there is a prospect of returns. But 
churches are still maintained where the field 
is already well covered; and for the sake of 
“prosperity” often move out of fields where 
the need is imperative. The smaller towns 
bear ample testimony to the prevalence of the 
first blunder, and the larger cities tell a sad 
tale of the second one. We must keep the 

service motive supreme in administration, 

171 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


which means that we must keep it supreme in 
those intrusted with administration—not an 
easy thing to do. Bishop McConnell remarks 
that it would shock our denominational agents 
to see Jesus at work preaching the gospel of 
the Kingdom and then failing to follow up 
his work. This remark is pertinent. No, they 
must have statistics. They must have a 
million tithers in a given time; they must 
know that so many thousand are registered 
for life service; and these must be adminis¬ 
tered from a central office. This is the spirit 
which puts the dollar mark upon the minister. 
Do the collections increase? Is the member¬ 
ship larger? Are there great congregations? 
Then he is deemed a success. It is hard in the 
count of quantity to make quality count. For 
the church to keep keyed to stewardship it 
must exercise the trusteeship of the spiritual 
in its soliciting. It must be as much con¬ 
cerned with the honesty of the appeal as with 
the results of it. This may prove difficult 
for some money raisers! Money for the church’s 
projects must not be obtained under false 
pretenses. It must be clearly understood that 
it does not go for the promulgation of one’s 
pet theological notions, or one’s political theory. 


STEWARDSHIP OF THE CHURCH 

It must be clear that the church will use its 
resources to honestly discover the will of God 
and to make that will operative in every realm 
of life. There is a golden mean between rash¬ 
ness and criminal silence, and the church must 
discover it. One is sometimes heartened to see 
how keenly some splendid layman sees through 
the smokescreens raised by careful solicitors. 
Most churchmen, as a matter of fact, would 
rather you differed from them than that you 
dared not follow out the logic of your faith. 
Numbers of laymen support ministers who 
do not support their economic theories. They 
feel that wisdom shall not die with them, and 
they can chance the church’s ministry dis¬ 
covering some way out of the bewildering 
tangle in which man is as yet. They are 
great-hearted enough to pay for the search of 
the truth even though they themselves have 
not found it, or cannot agree that the degree 
to which church leaders claim to have found 
it is of much consequence. They concede the 
church the right to seek such truth as is to 
be found, unhindered by economic interests 
and by the limitations which prevalent cus¬ 
toms set. There are not many wealthy men 

who try to control the church, although some 

173 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


of them try hard. Men are too fair at heart. 
They would rather have the church err on the 
side of freedom than that it be enslaved. 
Recent financial campaigns have taught the 
church that the bulk of its gifts come not from 
the excessively rich but from the great “middle 
class” and the rank and file of folks. Soliciting 
must be honest, not because it is the best 
policy, but because if it fails to be such the 
church lies! 

The church must show stewardship in its 
expenditures. The church must be made effec¬ 
tive, not only through a trained and equipped 
leadership, which in our present order will 
have to be well paid, but through adequate 
expenditures for religious education. It may 
have to pay less for music and more for trained 
teachers, although it might well have both. 
But it needs a sense of values that spends 
money where it will do most good. And the 
child must be set in the midst of its expendi¬ 
tures! Also there must be education of the 
grown-up folks. The church is much mis¬ 
understood. It needs publicity to correct 
opinion. We must attack the religious ignor¬ 
ance and indifference of the men in street 

and factory and mine in the language which 

174 


STEWARDSHIP OF THE CHURCH 


they speak. We must also introduce many 
churchmen to the church! We need profoundly 
simple writings which the common people will 
read gladly. Here lies an almost unexplored 
field for the Christian Church, though the 
sects have been wiser in their day, and have 
published their propaganda in almost every 
tongue. Let us have a ministry of good liter¬ 
ature and of the literature of goodness. The 
church must spend its money where it can do 
most good in the winning of life to Christ. 
One who has heard Dr. Helms describe the 
senseless efforts in which the church has in¬ 
dulged in trying to entice beauty-loving, 
musical Italians to attend services for worship 
in a dilapidated old store in some forlorn 
neighborhood, will realize that architecture and 
art may perform a genuine ministry. The 
bargain-counter spirit is inadequate to win 
men to Christ. The church must spend its 
funds wisely, but generously, to supply the 
spiritual needs on behalf of God. 

A word may also be said about the church 
as an investor. Here surely the church must 
show a keen sense of stewardship. To be sure, 
the church makes a better use of the earnings 

on its investments than individuals usually do. 

175 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


But that does not exempt it from deep con¬ 
scientiousness as to where its funds are placed. 
Bishop McConnell suggests that there should 
be a “white list” of investments available, so 
that one might have ample guidance as to just 
which investments would be most socially 
serviceable. He points out that the church 
should make sure to avoid those investments 
where the returns are suspiciously large, and 
those that are not unquestionably honest. The 
further danger is indicated that such invest¬ 
ments are likely to compromise the church in 
favor of the existing social order. If the church 
is unable by the force of circumstances to keep 
free from entangling alliances, it needs to make 
very sure that it knows the way out of them. 

And as an employer the church must mani¬ 
fest stewardship. It should see to it that 
the service of its servants is not hampered by 
lack of funds. On the other hand, it behooves 
its servants not to make excessive claims. 
The economic differences that now keep Chris¬ 
tian ministers from a more perfect brotherhood 
must wound the heart of God. Any young 
man in the ministry who has been promoted 
over his brothers in the matter of income well 

knows what jealousy often follows in its wake. 

176 


STEWARDSHIP OF THE CHURCH 

There must be some better way for the servants 
of Jesus Christ. There would be a different 
way had churches the stewardship view. Sec¬ 
retaries, superintendents, and even bishops, are 
in danger of getting what in labor circles is 
somewhat inelegantly called “the employer’s 
mind.” That the majority of them exercise 
their functions with true humility and large 
humanity bespeaks volumes for what the im¬ 
pact of God can do for men. Even janitors 
have right to fullness of life. When the church 
has work to be done, the chief consideration 
should scarcely be as to how cheaply it can be 
secured; it must have thought for those who 
labor for it. All in all, it would be a wonder¬ 
ful thing if the church could make “a divine 
revelation through its existence in material 
conditions .” 2 And what is to prevent its doing 
so, if the spirit of stewardship dominates its 
life? 

The church has yet another duty in this 
matter of stewardship. It needs to examine 
the motives of those who contribute toward it. 
It has a considerable duty as a receiver of 
wealth. It should understand clearly why 
people give to it. All too frequently men have 


2 Bishop McConnell. 


177 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


mistaken giving for stewardship, and have 
thought that money settles Christian obliga¬ 
tions. The church must emphasize the service 
motive in giving. In this respect the church 
has been grossly gullible. We misjudge gen¬ 
erosity. We need to emphasize motives. The 
postulate of psychologists that men can seldom 
be trusted to narrate their own experiences 
holds good when we have to ask men: Why 
do you give? But this is a prerogative which 
the Christian Church must keep. Neither size 
nor circumstance should be permitted to serve 
as a cloak to give low-motived giving the 
appearance of a high-motived act. The church 
must accept no substitute for stewardship. 
Browning somewhere says it is “not what man 
does which exalts him, but wdiat man would 
do.” We ought to differentiate between differ¬ 
ent types of giving in order that stewardship 
may not be cast from its throne. Some folks 
seem to “give by nature”; it is a matter of 
self-gratification; there is no sense of surrender 
to the will of God; there is often little thought 
as to whether the gift is commensurate with 
the ability of the giver or the need of the 
project. Sometimes, apparently large gen¬ 
erosity is due to the desire of the giver to 

178 


STEWARDSHIP OF THE CHURCH 


dominate socially or administratively the church 
to which he contributes, or to further the 
interest of his business by thus gaining a good 
name. It has the form of giving, but denies 
the power thereof. In some of the giving the 
competitive habit of the business world is 
introduced. A man “is not going to let any¬ 
body beat him” in the size of his gift. More¬ 
over, to appear more generous than others is 
a fit subject for self-congratulation. How 
widespread this unselfish selfishness is may be 
noted from the shrewd schemes of professional 
solicitors to “shame” folks into large giving, 
such as the persuading of some who are “lower” 
in social station to subscribe excessively. Surely 
such conduct has no claim to the label of giving 
it wears. Then there is the legalistic type. 
Here we enter a different atmosphere. Here 
is an inkling of spirituality. Allegiance to law 
forces the giving. To them the Bible says so; 
God’s law demands it. “Is it not written in 
the book of the law?” For them the obliga¬ 
tion to give is a sort of spiritual inhibition 
acting as a divine brake on human selfishness. 
They give because they must, not because they 
may. Sometimes people give on a basis of 

divestment. Here it is a duty to an inner 

179 


I 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 

decree, not to an outer word. It is fostered 
by the renunciation motive. It comes in the 
feeling that certain things are dear to us and 
just because they are dear, make acceptable 
offerings to divinity. It is the precursor of 
stewardship in many pagan cults. Carried over 
into our day, it says not so much, you must 
give as you ought to give. It is the requirement 
of life rather than the acquirement of it. But 
Christian stewardship is nothing short of 
surrender to the ideal that love is life. “God 
so loved the world that he gave his only- 
begotten Son.” His highest self-expression is 
his highest self-offering. Thus stewardship 
says that we find our best when we give our 
best. The trouble with much of our giving 
is that it is in response to isolated emotional 
stimuli. But stewardship keeps the heart 
exposed to the spiritual. Freely it has re¬ 
ceived; freely it gives. The church must know 
why men give, and must beget within its 
members this sense of discrimination. Stew¬ 
ardship comes to say that “the gift without 
the giver is bare.” The church must bestow 
credit where credit is due, and it must make 
sure to proclaim that generosity can never be 

a substitute for stewardship. 

180 



































































“Now the Jewish passover was near, so Jesus 
went up to Jerusalem. There he found, seated 
inside the temple, dealers in cattle, sheep and 
pigeons, also money-changers. Making a scourge 
of cords, he drove them all, sheep and cattle to¬ 
gether, out of the temple, scattered the coins of 
the brokers and upset their tables, and told the 
pigeon-dealers, 'Away with these! My Father’s 
house is not to be turned into a shop!* (His dis¬ 
ciples recalled the scripture saying, I am consumed 
with zeal for thy house.)”—The Gospel According 
to John. 

“No change in the economic methods of con¬ 
ducting the business of the world will avail to 
bring peace at home, for covetousness is too strong 
a passion. It is only the church which can con¬ 
vince the world that its misery is the result of the 
violation of the fundamental law of human brother¬ 
hood. The same is true of the purification of pol¬ 
itics, and the education of the young, and the sancti¬ 
fication of the family. All these depend upon the 
application of the principles revealed by Jesus, 
and only the disciples of Jesus can convince men 
that these are essential.”— Leighton Parks. 

“Then faded and vanished the last frontier 
Of hate, when the soul’s universal tongue 
Uttered the great word, ‘Brother!’ ” 

—Robert Haven Schauffler. 


182 


CHAPTER X 

TEACHING STEWARDSHIP 

The church must teach stewardship. This 
is in perfect accord with what it is here to do. 
It exists to keep alive in men the consciousness 
of the God and Father of our Lord. It must 
evangelize the world with the good news about 
him. It must bring mankind to God. People 
never rise above their conception of God . And 
so there comes the question. What sort of God 
does it teach? Does it teach an acquisitive God 
or one self-giving in service? If an acquisitive 
God, self-seeking is righteousness; if a sac¬ 
rificial one, love alone is right. But perhaps 
the church itself has not clearly set him forth. 
Then the question we have to ask is. What 
sort of God should it teach to accord with 
Jesus Christ? 

The scarcity of stewardship, the fact that it 
is but partly practiced by so many Christian 
folks, can be laid to the inadequate concep¬ 
tions of God which still prevail. Account for 

it as we will, relatively few have found the 

183 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


God who lived in Christ. This is the more 
amazing in view of the simplicity with which 
Jesus pictured him. It is worthy of our notice 
how Jesus thought of God. Did he describe 
him as one whose chief aim is to profit, whose 
end is to get all he can? He spoke of God as 
Father. Had he resembled some stewardship 
“leaders,” he would have taught him as Creator, 
but that did not occur to him. There are 
other truths about God which he might have 
emphasized, but he did not. He did not, 
because he wanted to put first things first. 
The men who gave the Apostles’ Creed the 
form which it now bears had the truth of it. 
They said: “I believe in God, the Father Al¬ 
mighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” They 
gave God’s Fatherhood precedence over his 
Creatorship. They put first things first. When 
Jesus described God, when he talked of him 
or to him, he spoke a word that gets to the 
heart of us—and him. He called him Father. 
It was a habit w T ith him to call God Father. 
“My Father,” he said when a boy. “Your 
Father,” he told his disciples. “Father,” he 
cried when his tortured body hung upon 
Calvary. In such a conception there is no 

room for the dominance of greed. The Chris- 

184 


TEACHING STEWARDSHIP 


tian thought of God is primarily that of an 
intimate and intensely interested Person, who 
is not far from any of us, and whose will is 
our best. This is the only thought of God 
that is able to redeem men from sin, which is 
selfishness, to salvation, which is love. “God 
is the most deeply obligated being in the 
universe.” “The judge of all the earth must 
do right.” 

And thus it comes that stewardship joins 
hands with evangelism. It is the function of 
evangelism to win men to God. Evangelism 
can succeed only as it shows God in his true 
light. The big business of showing men God 
has not proved child’s play anywhere along the 
line. Men have nearly always thought un¬ 
worthy thoughts of Deity. They have per¬ 
sistently buried divine perfection under human 
frailties in their speech of God. Even theol¬ 
ogy has been derelict to its privilege, in that 
it tried to adjust God to its systems, instead 
of adjusting its systems to God. It is still 
difficult for the average person to get any 
conception of God except that which is steeped 
in the thought and terminology of mediaevalism. 
The news is not broadcast yet that God is no 

autocrat. Some years ago Mr. Wells came 

185 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


forth with “the surprised air of a conjurer” 
out of the “dead museums and miles of misery” 
of ancient religious views. At that time he 
called his “discovery” “God the Invisible 
King,” despite the fact that in most evangel¬ 
ical thinking the kingship of God (while 
acknowledged) is emphasized less and less, 
while the kingdom of God is coming to the fore. 
Pell-mell in pursuit of a monarchlike God 
troop bands of novelists who write like theo¬ 
logians with the slight difference that in their 
writings you have to wade through a cribful 
of rubbish to get at a kernel of truth. Evan¬ 
gelism must rid men’s thoughts of a despotic 
Deity who demands that toll and tribute shall 
be tendered at his courts. It must show the 
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, who 
“knowing that the Father had given all things 
into his hands, . . . washed the disciples’ feet.” 
It must laud the service-motive which actuates 
our God. It is alleged that Mr. Ingersoll was 
never more popular with his audiences than 
when he held up to derision the Old-Testament 
accounts which claim the sanction of God for 
the cruelties they record, and climaxed this 
with the question: “What do you think of a 

God like that?” But to-day the tables are 

186 


TEACHING STEWARDSHIP 


turned. It is now the Christian Church which 
acclaims its ardent abhorrence of distorted 
pictures of God. Izaak Walton tells us that 
Dr. Donne left his successer. Dr. Winniff, a 
picture called ‘‘The Skeleton.” The church is 
weary of having bequeathed and of bequeath¬ 
ing pious pessimisms of a proprietor-Lord. 
Owner though he is, he is Father first of all! 
We must redeem the conception of life by the 
conception of God. Herman Hagedorn’s por¬ 
trayal of one who neglected his privilege ought 
to admonish our hearts: 

“If I could only wash out of my eyes 
The look she gave me. Oh, the heights and deeps 
Of that reproach! It was as though she cried, 

I wanted strength and you had none to give me, 

I wanted God, and you had only words !” 1 

Of course, there comes the objection: That 
makes your God too “soft.” Nothing could 
be further from the truth. For there is an¬ 
other side to the task of evangelism. In order 
to win men to God, it must not only show 
forth the beauty of his holiness but the dis¬ 
parity between him and their unholy lives. 
There must be conviction of sin—the sin of 

1 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company from The Heart 
of Youth , p. 157, by Herman Hagedorn. 

187 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


selfishness. When a friend once told Robert 
McCheyne that he had just preached on hell, 
the famous preacher said: “And were you 
able to do it with tenderness ?” Done in the 
spirit of Jesus, no work will have greater results 
among the adults than preaching against the 
sin of greed. Some one has remarked that 
Paul, writing to the early saints, incorporated 
this advice: “Let him that stole, steal no 
more.” Why such advice to the churches? 
Because they stood in need of a perfect ethical 
conception of their religious experience. And 
if Christians need thus to be convinced of the 
error of self-seeking, how much more need 
those who have never turned their hearts to 
Jesus Christ! They must be faced with the 
question whether they have not bought their 
money with their lives, whether they have not 
foundered on greed. Selfishness blasphemes the 
Holy Spirit; it laughs God to scorn. It cannot 
be forgiven because it cannot give. The 
gospel of service and love has no easy-going 
God. He tramples with resistless wrath on all 
mammonism! 

One cannot preach the stewardship message 
by an occasional sermon. It must be the 

atmosphere by which sermons are charged. 

188 


TEACHING STEWARDSHIP 


A man needs clean hands and a pure heart 
to proclaim this truth. In his own spirit and 
on his knees, he must beat back the gain 
motive and keep unsullied in his life the spirit 
of saviourliood. This is no easy thing. He 
must fight if he would reign; and the fight is 
on the battlefield of his self-interest. 

“Judas,” says P. W. Wilson in The Christ 
We Forget , “wanted the power of money, be¬ 
cause that power seemed to make him inde¬ 
pendent of the Saviour. . . . He began by deny¬ 
ing that adoration of the Saviour is worth 
three hundred pence. He ended by valuing 
the Saviour’s life at thirty pieces of silver .” 2 
That was a great word Paul delighted so to 
use— Karisma —“free gift.” Perhaps it was 
merely naive psychology, but Paul reached 
foundation when he used the phrase. For 
this is the psychology of God —free gift—free 
in that finer freedom that never denies its 
source nor belies its relationships. “God’s 
whole scheme of redemption is an advertise¬ 
ment of his passion to give.” “God so loved 
that he gave.” What if the world should daily 
betray his attitude? 

2 The Christ We Forget, by P. W. Wilson, Fleming H. Revell Company 
publishers, New York City. 


189 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


But in the domain of teaching lies the hope 
for stewardship. The subject demands deep 
study. Unfortunately, the material avail¬ 
able is scant under the title of stewardship. 
But studies in the social gospel, that emphasize 
conduct throughout, provide splendid materials 
with which to teach stewardship. The appeal 
for the social gospel has had to be made to 
many who already had settled opinions of 
Christianity. What wonder that to them the 
message suggested the speech of an alien who, 
with socialist accent, utters Christian shib¬ 
boleths? Such barriers but rarely exist in 
those who are launching their lives. If we are 
able to convince them that their consecrations 
must he social, we shall win for the full-orbed 
gospel of Christ the following it deserves. 

Thus adolescence is par excellence the time 
for the teaching of it. “There are many fea¬ 
tures about the period of youth that make it 
a time of special opportunity/’ says Professor 
Tracy, in The Psychology of Adolescence . 3 
“There is abounding life, vitality, and vigor. 
There is a maximum of enthusiastic interest 
in things, and a minimum of cynicism and 

s Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from The 
Psychology of Adolescence, by Frederick Tracy. 

190 



TEACHING STEWARDSHIP 


bitterness. Hope is unclouded, faith is buoyant, 
and charity is broad and generous. The 
intellect is easily persuaded into regarding all 
things as products of supreme wisdom and all 
events as under the control of supreme benef¬ 
icence. Youth is by nature theistic and 
idealistic. . . . 

“The moral attitude is not mercenary . Dis¬ 
interested devotion to others, and to duty for 
its own sake, can be counted on; more than 
in childhood, whose conceptions are restricted 
in area, complete in quality, and largely under 
control of the empirical ego; and more than in 
mature life, when the heart may have become 
chilled by contact with a social order that is 
honey-combed with injustice and cruelty, when 
altruism and idealism are found to have but 
little value in the world’s markets, and when 
the roseate dreams and visions of an earlier 
age are only too likely to have faded into the 
light of common day. . . . 

“The touch of living personality . . . meets, 
at this time, with its readiest and warmest 
response. And . . . response to the touch of 
personality is the tap-root of religion. Sub¬ 
stitute for all finite and fallible personalities 

that of the infinitely good and great, and in 

191 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 

the response to that you have the essence of 
religion. The heart in youth is hungry for 
communion with a personality that is worthy 
of adoration and service, eager to let itself go 
out to such a personality in service and sacri¬ 
fice. The problem of the Christian teacher 
here is not so much to convince the intellect 
of the truth of certain abstract propositions 
about Christ, as to hold up before the pupil 
the exquisite personality of Christ, as worthy 
of the highest devotion and the most complete 
service that can be rendered. . . . 

“And so the religious life. . . means the 
elimination of all discordance between these 
two—the dominant life-ideal on the one side, 
and the concept of the Highest Being on 
the other—in such a way that the service of 
God and of one’s fellow men in everyday life 
will be the natural response, alike to the 
requirements of a consistent theology and to 
the demands of a moral imperative.” 

This excellent putting of the matter should 
awaken all of us to the marvelous opportunity 
for stewardship which adolescence offers. 

Nor can we neglect the child. From an 

early age the instinct of acquisition may be 

seen in operation. Our very earliest training 

192 



TEACHING STEWARDSHIP 


is not alone important, but frequently deci¬ 
sive: 

“No change in childhood’s early day. 

No storm that raged, no thought that ran, 

But leaves its track upon the clay 
Which slowly hardens into man.” 

This is more truth than poetry. Here, to be 
sure, the church runs against an obstacle 
difficult to surmount. When a child is born 
and reared in an acquisitive atmosphere, when 
its ideals at home are directed toward the 
largest gain rather then the highest service, 
how shall the occasional teaching of the church 
counteract such influence? Thus the cycle 
leads us back to saving the parents in order 
to save the children. 

And now, to use the favorite colloquialism of 
one of our bishops in the tangled moment of 
a conference session: “Brethren, let us see 
where we are at.” We began by noting that 
there is a revival of stewardship. There are 
idiosyncrasies and misinterpretations, but at 
the heart of it all there is a determination to 
seek the will of God in regard to property. 
This is expressed in the tithe, which frequently 
obtains from inferior motives, and is often 

resorted to at the behest of legalism, but 

193 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


evidences the church’s desire to see the will 
of God done in the earth. But if stewardship 
ends with the tithe or with generosity, the 
means has defeated the end, and a good has 
once again been made the enemy of the best. 
There must be an honest facing of what life 
is for. There are those who try to be Chris¬ 
tians with a content view of life, but only the 
view of life that fulfills the intent of God can 
hope to follow Christ. We see that property, 
an instrument for good, has been utilized for 
evil. A Christian’s private attitude toward 
it, therefore, is that he may use it only for 
the development of his soul and the saving of 
the world, the honor of his God. In business 
his attitude is that the will of God and his reign 
must come to expression in it. Property, in 
public relations, must articulate Christ. The 
social order must be Christianized. The church, 
which most nearly of all institutions should 
approximate an unselfish life in God, must 
be first in its sense of trusteeship with the 
property it has. It must be a priest in the 
realm of stewardship. But it must also be 
prophet. It cannot rest content until the 
servant spirit dominates all men. It must 

both practice and preach stewardship. 

194 




“Now people brought children for him to touch 
them, and the disciples checked them; but Jesus 
was angry when he saw this, and he said to them, 
‘Let the children come to me, do not stop them: 
the Realm of God belongs to such as these. I tell 
you truly, whoever will not submit to the Reign 
of God like a child will never get into it at all.’ 
Then he put his arms round them, laid his hands 
on them and blessed them .”—The Gospel According 
to Mark. 

“From the widows they do not turn away their 
countenance, and they rescue the orphan from him 
who does him violence, and he who has gives to 
him who has not without grudging. . . . And if 
there is among them one that is poor and needy, 
and they have not an abundance of necessaries, 
they fast two or three days that they may supply 
the needy with their necessary food .”—Apology of 
Aristides (124-140). 

“Our blood splashes upward, O goldheaper, 

And your purple shows your path! 

But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper 
Than the strong man in his wrath.” 

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 


196 


CHAPTER XI 

A STEWARDSHIP REVERIE 

I turned away from my desk. I left the 
Book where I had been reading in it. I looked 
out of the window and I saw. I saw the day. 
What so dreary as when June goes wet? The 
rain had invited the wind to a partnership 
of molestation and together they played all 
manner of pranks with respectable umbrellas. 
It was toward dusk and toilers were home¬ 
ward bound. They were hurrying to get out 
of the rain. Yes, but that is not all of the 
truth about the day. That morning I had 
lazily viewed the landscape o’er—there is a 
good deal of landscape about a city street. 
Three impressions sauntered in: It has rained; 
it is raining; it will rain. Now I saw that the 
heart story of this rainy day was not that 
those men should get out of the rain, but that 
they went into it. That folks go to work in 
the rain—let a poet sing about that and have 
a theme worthy of song. Why did these folks 

go into the rain? This evening the answer 

197 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


came walking along. He was poorly clad, he 
had neither overcoat nor umbrella, but he had 
a bundle of wood covered with some burlap 
slung over his shoulder and with it was hasten¬ 
ing home. In fancy I followed him. It was 
little more than a hovel into which he entered, 
but it was home! An emaciated woman— 
for poverty shows so in faces even though 
there be wealth in the heart—greets him with 
a kiss and with some dry garments to prove 
the love of which that kiss was the counter¬ 
sign. And arms—baby arms—were out¬ 
stretched for him. Why had he gone into 
the rain? Because he needed bread? Yes, but 
he hadn’t thought much of that. Because she 
needed bread? Yes, he had thought of that 
and the thought clutched at his heart. But 
to know why he had gone into the rain you 
must remember another thing. It was the 
children's bread he had thought of most and 
his heart had wept for that, for the children’s 
bread! They had to be fed, and it was his 
to feed them. The bravery of love had driven 
him into the storm and made his homeward 
walk a triumphant task. I know T what you 
may be thinking. You may object that most 

folks do not go into the rain thus motived 

198 


A STEWARDSHIP REVERIE 


consciously. They go from habit, from a 
sense of duty, for the love of gain. Do they? 
No; many may; but not a few there be who 
go for the children’s bread. 

“All life moving to one measure— 

Daily bread, daily bread— 

Bread of life and bread of labor. 

Bread of bitterness and sorrow, 

Hand to mouth, and no to-morrow. 

Dearth for housemate, death for neighbor— 
Yet when all the babes are fed. 

Love, are there not crumbs to treasure ?” 1 

Then I thought again of the Book and to 
it I returned. It was the Syro-Phcenician 
woman I had been reading about. And I 
wondered if it rained that day when she came 
to see Jesus about her child. Be assured of 
this. If there was no storm outside, there 
was a storm inside. She walked with a cloud 
on her heart. The sky under which she trod 
was dark and threatening. Her child was 
stricken with lunacy. Here was one woman 
who stood ready to admit that there was 
something the matter with her child. She 
came to Jesus just at a time when Jesus was 


i “Daily Bread,” Wilson Wilfred Gibson, The Macmillan Company. 

199 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


trying to get away from people and be alone 
with his disciples a while. Mark’s stately and 
suggestive record says that he 4 ‘entered into 
an house, and would have no man know it; 
and he could not be hid. For a certain woman, 
whose little daughter had an unclean spirit, 
heard of him, and came and fell at his feet. . . . 
And she besought him that he would cast 
forth the devil out of her daughter .” 2 You 
respect that mother, don’t you? You would 
respect her all the more if you knew she had 
come through the rain! Of this you may be 
certain: She did not consult the weather. She 
did not wait until it was a nice day to go out. 
She was after something for her child, just 
like that man I saw in the rain, just like you 
at the heart of your task. She came not about 
bread, but about mind. The trouble with 
that child was that it had not intelligence to 
understand; the tragedy with that child was 
that it had not sense enough to sense love. 
That makes lunacy so vexing—lunacy knows 
not love. Her daughter was grievously vexed 
with a devil. So she came all the way to see 
Jesus and perhaps she came through the rain. 
What a dismal reception she got! “He an- 


2 Authorized Version. 


200 



A STEWARDSHIP REVERIE 


swered her not a word.” What a chill that 
silence sent to her heart! Will she speak again? 
O, yes; folks do not let a chill stand in the 
way of the children’s bread—did I not see it 
this rainy day?—folks are not rebuffed by a 
chill when they speak for the sake of love. 
She continued her request for help. It bothered 
the disciples. Do you remember those mothers 
with their babies? The idea of bringing babies 
where Jesus was! Now, here was another 
mother ranting about another child! Would 
it never let up? John Oxenham sings: “Blessed 
are the childless, loving children still. Theirs 
shall be a mightier family. Even as the stars 
of heaven.” Mothers and children, especially 
children, bothered the disciples. Came a time 
when they no longer did. When the last of 
them—who had been the youngest—spoke 
his last words to his followers he is reported to 
have called them, as had been his wont, “little 
children.” Perhaps the reason he said that 
so often and so tenderly was because he remem¬ 
bered how childish he and his fellows had been 
about children in the long ago. John became 
great when he learned the value of a child . This 
Syro-Phoenician woman—this Syro-Phoenician 

mother—had learned that. She belonged to 

201 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


that time-long fraternity of which that man 
was a member whom I saw out there in the 
rain with some wood to carry home. It is a 
high art in which she was versed. “And his 
disciples came and besought him saying. Send 
her away; for she crieth after us.” “But he 
answered and said”—and was it something 
cheering and heartening he said? Was it 
some word of healing to assuage her agony? 
But he answered and said not to her but to 
them: “I was not sent but unto the lost sheep 
of the house of Israel.” Is there a possibility 
of irony in these words? The lost sheep of 
Israel needed to be found; not so a mother 
heart that found its way to him. Who knows? 
But what he said to them was apparently said 
against her! But she is undaunted still. Man, 
you must summon a hurricane to stay a love 
like that. You must get you the blast of 
Gabriel’s trump before you can still her cry. 
“She came,” as though she had not come far 
enough; “she came and worshiped and said, 
Lord, help me!” And he answered and said 
to her, or was it to them?—“It is not meet 
to take the children’s bread and cast it to the 
dogs.” It has been said that this that he said 

was the most heartless of all his sayings. It 

202 



A STEWARDSHIP REVERIE 


has been said that to say these words was 
high-handed cruelty. Now, doesn’t it sound 
that way? John Bunyan, before going to 
Bedford Jail, kissed the upturned face of his 
sightless girl and said: “Poor child! how hard 
it is like to go with thee in this world! Thou 
must be beaten; must suffer hunger, cold, and 
nakedness; and yet I cannot endure that even 
the wind should blow upon thee.” If this is 
a fair sample of a father’s love, can it be that 
Christ was unmoved of a mother’s love? 

These words have been a thorn in the flesh 
of the expositors. That he should have said 
this merely to test her faith seems by far too 
cold-hearted to most of them. They sense 
that it cannot have been humor in the face 
of need. Our Lord “called nothing common 
or unclean.” But they all unite in saying— 
though they know not that they unite—that 
his compassion here struggled with his con¬ 
viction. And compassion won. His task lay 
with the Jews, and his answer to this call of 
need was the by-product of a soul so big that 
it cannot be bounded by any one task. There 
are many other things that the expositors say, 
but there is one point they seldom emphasize. 

That is this: For whatever reason Christ said 

203 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


this, what he said was true! And in our har- 
monizing-haste we have seldom thought of 
this! Let it first be said that Christ meant 
here no disrespect to dogs! In the story of 
Lazarus and Dives Jesus showed how much a 
dog may excel a man. Jesus, like all good 
thinkers, had a wholesome respect for a dog. 
“I do not keep a dog,” says Boreham, the 
essayist. “It is too humiliating. A man 
cannot possibly enjoy the companionship of a 
dog and maintain his self-respect.” Masefield, 
the modern poet, sings sweet songs of the dog. 
Saul Kane, in The Everlasting Mercy , has 
known 

“Those poor lonely ones who find 
Dogs more mild than human kind. 

For dogs, I said, are nobles born . . . 

I’ve known dogs to leave their dinner, 

Nosing a kind heart in a sinner. 

Poor old Crafty wagged his tail 
The day I first came home from jail. 

When all my folks, so primly clad. 

Glowered back and thought me mad. 

And muttered how they’d been respected. 
While I was what they’d all expected. 

(I’ve thought of that old dog for years, 

And of how near I come to tears).” 3 

* Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from Collected 
Poems, by John Masefield. 


204 



A STEWARDSHIP REVERIE 


“It is not meat to take the children’s bread 
and cast it to the dogs.” It is not right to 
use resources for children for inferior purposes! 
But the world is doing just this. Resources 
for children! How Christ was concerned with 
the child. “Permit them to come,” “Of such 
is the Realm of God,” “Be like them,” “If 
ye offend one of these little ones.” Could 
language convey his idea with greater clarity? 
We must put the child in the midst; the child 
is our business; the child must be the business 
of the business world; all other business must 
be aligned with it. And just now it is hard 
going for children; there are ominous clouds; 
there are storms not of their making threaten¬ 
ing in the skies. Jesus calls us to make the 
child our criterion! Incidentally, we might 
also have the mother in mind: 

“To make him plump she starved her body thin. 

And he, he ate the food, and never knew. 

He laughed and played as little children do .” 4 

But this aside. It is the child’s need that 
commands Christ’s power. It is the child’s 
need that comes to summon our lives. Until 
business is salvation, the biggest business in 
the world is the business of salvation. And 


4 Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, from Collected 
Poems, by John Masefield. 

205 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


when we save the child, we Christianize human¬ 
ity at its base. 

I once visited a home where poverty and 
filth tried to outdo each other. When I 
came in, the little girl set up a pitiful cry. 
The mother, intending I should not hear the 
whisper I heard well, said to the child, “That 
man ain’t yer papa; he won’t hurt!” Yet 
that child, cowering in fear and covered with 
filth, seen through the eyes of Jesus surpasses 
in worth the realty value of the city in which 
she lives! Within a stone’s throw factories 
hummed; only a few days earlier a prosperous 
layman said: “Pastor, business is good!” I 
wonder if Christ would agree? Good; business 
good! Well, “in the day of Jesus Christ,” 
this is just what it will be! 

Sickening sentimentalism; infantile idealism; 
impractical and foolish? 

“Then Christ sought out an artisan, 

A low-browed, stunted, haggard man. 

And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin. 
Pushed from her faintly want and sin. 

“These set he in the midst of them. 

And as they drew back their garment-hem 
For fear of defilement, ‘Lo, here,’ said he, 

‘The images ye have made of me!’ ” 

206 


A STEWARDSHIP REVERIE 


But if we care for what Jesus thinks a little 
child must lead us to the dwelling place of 
light. The question is, Do we care? Does 
business make it possible for childhood to 
come to its best? Does it strive to furnish 
them in body, mind and soul? Ambassadors 
to childhood, does business make us that? Or 
do we still sacrifice children on the bloody 
shrine of Mammon? Perhaps Jesus was right 
after all. We must put the child in the midst. 
Business must serve the children of God, or it 
does not serve him at all. 


207 


“And I remember still 
The words, and from whence they came. 
Not he that repeateth the name 
But he that doeth the will. 

And him evermore I behold 
Walking in Galilee, 

Through the cornfield’s waving gold 
By the shores of the Beautiful Sea. 

And that voice soundeth on 
From the centuries that are gone 
To the centuries that shall be. 

From all vain pomps and shows. 

From the pride that overflows 

Poor, sad humanity 
Through all the dust and heat 
Turns back with bleeding feet 
By the weary round it came. 

Unto the simple thought. 

By the great Master taught. 

And that remaineth still. 

Not he that repeateth the name 
But he that doeth the will.” 


208 


APPENDIX 

RELATIVE TO TITHE 

The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religion 
and Knowledge 

“The history among the Hebrews is far 
from clear; two situations appear, that in 
Deuteronomy and that in P. . . . Deut. 14. 22 
sqq. requires a tithing of agricultural products 
and of the products of pastoral life, to be 
devoted to a communal meal at the central 
sanctuary. In case the home was too distant 
the tithe might be commuted and material 
for the meal purchased at the sanctuary. The 
purpose of the tithe in this case was not the 
support of the services at the Temple, but a 
joyous meal of the agriculturist and his estab¬ 
lishment with the Levites of his locality, the 
latter being included because they had no 
landed possessions. It did not go to the priests 
or temple officers. Purity of the participants 
was required. Deut. 14. 28-29, 26. 12-15 
require that in the third year the tithe shall 

1 Funk & Wagnalla Company, publishers. 

209 



DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


be deposited at the home (not at the sanc¬ 
tuary) for the benefit of the Levite, stranger, 
fatherless, and widow; this is not a second 
tithing but a special employment of the tithe 
for charitable purposes. It may have been a 
sort of compensation for the abolition of the 
early public offering and meal of which the 
needy partook. Of a second tithing expressly 
for the Levites Deuteronomy knows nothing. 
The relation of the tithe to the offering of 
first-fruits in Deut. is not clear; possibly the 
two are identical, as it seems unlikely that 
each generation of the herd should be sub¬ 
jected to a double tax, and Deut. 26. 1-15 
puts first-fruits and the tithe in close con¬ 
nection. In this case the basket of first-fruits 
brought to the priest is simply a part of the 
tithe which is devoted as a whole to the joyous 
meal. Against this Deut. 18. 4 is no objec¬ 
tion, even as a later insertion. And with this 
conception many difficulties vanish. ‘Tithe 5 
becomes an expression for the entire offering 
of first fruits, over which a sort of control is 
introduced (by supplementary provisions). The 
entire law omits mention of the tithe, then, 
because it is identical with the offering of 

first-fruits. The treatment of the tithe in P 

210 


APPENDIX 


must be considered an extension of the situation 
in Deuteronomy. Num. 18. 26-28 gives the 
whole tithe to the Levites, and this was again 
tithed for the Aaronites (Neh. 10. 38). Lev. 
27. 31-33 requires the addition of a fifth of 
the tithe of the first-fruits when it is com¬ 
muted, and aims to procure honesty in pay¬ 
ment of tithes of cattle. This law is first men¬ 
tioned in 2 Chron. 31. 5-6; it is not found in 
Neh. 10 nor Mai. 3, hence it is deduced that 
it arose between the time of Nehemiah, and 
that of the Chronicler. In attempting to 
reconcile P and D. . . . some have thought 
that D had in view a second tenth, which 
came to light first after the tenth of the tithe 
had been deducted. . . . Then later practice 
(Tob. 1. 6-8) seems to show the tithes of P 
and D both claimed by the Levites. Theo¬ 
retically there were three tithes, according to 
P for the Levites, according to D for the 
public meal, and that each third year for the 
poor. The first accrued wholly to the Levites 
and covered all that came from the earth 
(cf. Matt. 23. 23); the second was for the 
officers’ meal, though Philo gives it to the 
Levites, and so raises the question whether 

the twofold or threefold tithing was merely 

211 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


theoretical. How the system worked out is 
not known. From 2 Chron. 31. 4 it has been 
inferred that till the time of Hezekiah the 
tithes were too small for the support of the 
personnel of the cultus, and from Deut. 12. 17 
a misuse of the tithes is deduced (cf. Neh. 
13. 5 sqq.; Mai. 3. 8). But there is no report 
of the actual exactions of both the tithes of 
P and D, and Josephus mentions only the 
Levitical tenth which was converted into money 
on the spot (Life, XII, 15); so at the second 
temple a second tithe does not appear. But 
the Jews who were true to the law seem to have 
recognized loyally their duty in the matter of 
tithes (Ecclus. XXXV, 11; 1 Macc. Ill, 49; 
cf. Matt. 23. 23).” 

S. R. Driver, “Deuteronomy,” International 
Critical Commentary, 1 p. 169. 

“The Deuteronomic law of tithe is, however, 
in serious, and indeed irreconcilable, conflict 
with the law of P on the subject. ... The 
data at our disposal do not enable us to write 
a history of the Hebrew tithe.” 

Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Ed. 
James Hastings): 2 

1 Charles Scribner’s Sons, publishers. 

* Ibid. 


212 



APPENDIX 


“Among the Hebrews the relation of tithes 
to first-fruits is complicated, and opinions differ 
as to whether they were distinct or not. First- 
fruits would naturally vary in quantity. Tithe 
expresses more or less a fixed proportion. 
Perhaps the tithe represents first-fruits made 
systematic, or different names may have been 
favored at different times and in different 
localities. The tithe is called ‘an heave offer¬ 
ing’ in Num. 18. 24, but the two are apparently 
separate in Deut. 12. 6ff. In the later legis¬ 
lation first-fruits and tithes appear to be dis¬ 
tinguished. The tithe, which is not men¬ 
tioned in the Book of the Covenant, appears 
first in the Northern Kingdom in the time of 
Jereboam II, as the material given for a feast 
at the sanctuary—though the feast was one 
for the rich at the expense of the poor. . . . 
The tithe in the Deuteronomic code is not a 
forced tribute. ... It was not a direct due 
for the priesthood or for public religious serv¬ 
ices. ... Is the third year’s tithe additional to 
the tithe given each year, or is it a special 
form of treating tithe in the third year? Here 
again opinions differ.” 

Dictionary of the Bible (Ed. James Hastings): 

“In the O. T. two ideas lie at the root of 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


the custom; the more antique—apart from its 
position in the Bible—is that which regards 
the offering of a tenth to the Deity as his 
due, owing to his being the Supreme Owner 
of the land and all that it brings forth, or 
that feeds upon it (Lev. 27. 30-33); here the 
underlying thought is that of propitiation— 
if the Supreme Owner does not receive his 
due, his blessing will be wanting another year. 
The other idea, which is obviously a later 
one, is that of thankfulness for the blessings 
received (Gen. 28. 20-22); the tithes were 
given in recognition of what the Giver of all 
things had accorded to his worshipers. Among 
the Israelites this ancient custom was taken 
advantage of by the Levitical priesthood, who, 
as those employed in the sanctuary of Jahweh, 
claimed for themselves on behalf of him, a 
tithe of all.” 

The Encyclopedia Britannica: 

“On the religious side the oldest laws (e.g. 
Exod. 34. 26) speak of bringing the first fruits 
of the land to the house of Yahweh. In the 
8th century the term ‘tithe’ was used in Israel 
of religious dues (Amos 4. 4; Gen. 28. 22), and 
in the 7th century Deuteronomic legislation the 

word is often found. In Deuteronomy the 

214 




APPENDIX 


new point emphasized is not that tithes must 
be paid, but that they must be consumed at 
the central, instead of a local sanctuary. . . . 
Such a tithe is still nothing more than the 
old offering of ‘firstfruits’ . . . and it was only 
natural that as time went on there should be 
some fixed standard of the due amount of 
the annual sacred tribute. The establishment 
of such a standard does not necessarily imply 
that full payment was exacted. . . . The priests 
of the sanctuaries had of old a share in the 
sacrificial feasts, and among those who are 
to share in the triennial tithe Deuteronomy 
includes the Levites, i.e., the priests of the 
local sanctuaries who had lost their old per¬ 
quisites by the centralization of worship. In 
Ezekiel as in the Law of Holiness there is no 
mention of tithes; he proposes to support all 
public worship from the proceeds of a general 
tax (45. 13) levied by the prince, the old first- 
fruits being allotted to the priests. In the 
Persian period the tithe was converted to the 
use of the Temple (Mai. 3. 8-10). As Malachi 
speaks in Deuteronomic phrase of ‘the whole 
tithe,’ the payment to the Levites (now . 
subordinate ministers of the Temple) was 

perhaps still only triennial; and if even this 

215 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 


was difficult to collect, we may be sure that 
the minor sacrificial tithe had very nearly 
disappeared. . . . The last change in the system 
was the appropriation of the Levitical tithe by 
the priests.” 

See further: Peake’s Commentary on the 
Bible; A Dictionary of Religion and Ethics , 
Shailer Mathews and Gerald B. Smith. 


216 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Of the books used in the preparation of 
these chapters, the author is most deeply 
indebted to: 

Francis J. McConnell, Church Finance and 
Social Ethics. 

R. H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society. 

Other books used are: 

Charles A. Beard, The Economic Basis of 
Politics. 

Borden P. Bowne, Principles of Ethics. 

James Bryce, International Relations. 

Edwin Grant Conklin, The Direction of Hu¬ 
man Evolution. 

George Cross, Creative Christianity. 

S. R. Driver, Deuteronomy. 

Edward S. Drown, The Creative Christ. 

Charles A. Ellwood, The Reconstruction of 
Religion. 

Glenn Frank, The Politics of Industry. 

Charles A. Gardner, The Ethics of Jesus and 
Social Progress. 

Alfred E. Garvie, The Purpose of God in 
Christ. 


217 


( 


DEEPER MEANING OF STEWARDSHIP 

T. R. Glover, The Jesus of History. 

Charles E. Gore, Property , Its Duties and 
Rights. 

George B. Gray, A Critical Introduction to 
the Old Testament. 

L. T. Hobhouse, The Rational Good. 

Benjamin Kidd, The Science of Power. 

Francis J. McConnell, Public Opinion and 
Theology. 

James Moffatt, The Theology of the Gospels. 

Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the 
Social Gospel. 

Frederick Tracy, The Psychology of Adoles¬ 
cence . 


218 




















Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 





















































